Engineered Pain Porn, Lack of Accountability, and A Stained Legacy. Let Gen Z go off!
So let me start by saying, Netflix is killing it with the documentaries. As someone who loves documentaries, especially the ones that unpack true crime, I am grateful I can hop on Netflix and find exactly what I’m looking for. Even though that monthly subscription fee keeps inching up to astronomical, I am generally a pleased paying customer. Keep giving us great content and pissing off the current administration, Netflix!
The other day I watched Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model. It doesn’t fall into the true crime category, but it damn sure could. America’s Next Top Model premiered in May 2003. I was trying to remember what I was even doing in 2003. Probably somewhere gallivanting in my youth. I love the word gallivanting, by the way, if you haven’t noticed. When people say, go touch grass, I think of gallivanting and skipping through the forest. That was probably me in 2003.
I had completely forgotten about the show, the cast, models in general, and how aesthetically vital they were in sustaining the fashion industry. Tyra Banks was a touchpoint for many Black and brown girls. She made history as the first African-American woman on covers like GQ and Sports Illustrated. Not only did she take up space in fashion, she explored film and television too, appearing on shows little Black girls were watching like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and starring in the Disney film Life-Size as a Barbie-esq doll. She was also a CoverGirl, and we were all obsessed with singing “easy, breezy, beautiful, CoverGirl.” She gave us a glimpse of our likeness in an industry that didn’t like us. We witnessed her building a legacy in real time. So when Top Model came on the scene with Tyra at the helm, a whole lot of us were locked in. We believed in her. We were rooting for her! No shade, but shade. We believed when she said she wanted to shift and change the industry, to give young women who did not fit the beauty industry’s narrow-minded standards a chance. Baby, I love a dismantling of inhumane systems that plague the world, so I was tapped in too. But I quickly realized, even in season one, that this was not it. I can’t remember exactly when I stopped watching. I want to say when Toccara got eliminated, because Toccara was plus-sized like me and deserved better treatment. I checked out.
Apparently in 2020, when everybody was bored in quarantine, folks started revisiting Top Model. Some rewatched it. A lot of Gen Z watched it for the first time, seventeen years later. And you know Gen Z does not play. They are going to call a spade a spade every single time. They dragged Tyra and the show through the mud, rightfully so. Many of us geriatric millennials feel a little indifferent because we lived through it, but we are also like, go off with the truth, Gen Z kings and queens.
I won’t tell too much of the documentary in case you haven’t watched it, though clips and op-eds are circulating everywhere. A couple of things stood out to me.
Tyra’s Disposition and Lack of Accountability
A content creator I follow said, “Tyra is insufferable and a narcissist.” I’ve been thinking about that ever since. I struggle with the word narcissist, especially in 2026, because people throw it around like Nick Cannon at a fertility clinic. “You get a sperm, you get a sperm, you ALL get a sperm!” Too much? Ok. Ok. I am also hyper-protective of Black women, so I think carefully before speaking about them publicly.
Tyra’s disposition, lack of accountability, blaming executives, refusing to answer questions directly, not fully mending the trauma inflicted under her leadership, and not checking on a so-called friend who had a stroke eight years prior to the documentary airing—all of that felt problematic and disheartening. She even blamed her viewers, saying, “I knew I went too far. It was very, very intense. But you guys were demanding it, so we kept pushing more and more and more.” Enter Kanye shrug with a smug pierced-lip energy. Girl, what? Stop it.
Legacy will air you out if you are not careful. I think about Jesse Jackson. I am grateful for his work through Rainbow PUSH Coalition, but when the announcement came that he passed, that wasn’t the first thing I thought about. I will never forget the hot mic moment when he was talking about then-Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama, saying, “See, Barack’s been talking down to Black people… I want to cut his nuts out.” We all make mistakes. It is when you project that you do not care about the mistake that stains your legacy. Tyra’s legacy is not stained simply by what happened on the show, but by how she is responding now. How we react when someone expresses harm matters, whether we agree with them or not. There are human beings who experienced trauma under a show you had creative control over. If you cannot see the humanity in that and respond humanely, that is a problem.
Watching her responses made me reflect on my own reality check. I do not ever want to be that person, and I need to make sure I am not.
Society’s Obsession With Reality TV
I am a fan of quite a few reality TV shows: The Real Housewives, Married to Medicine, Love Is Blind, Ready to Love. I love them. But none of it is real reality. There is often a lack of care in exchange for viewership numbers, and that was evident in Top Model’s format. They pulled structure ideas from shows like The Real World and Survivor, sacrificing young women as guinea pigs. From body shaming, to filming oral surgery, to exposing someone’s sexuality on camera, to recording someone being sexually assaulted, to yelling at a girl you claimed you wanted to help so badly that lawyers had to step in. That is not just on Tyra. That is on the entire production team and network. And it is not OK. I don’t care how long ago it happened; it happened and it was not OK, period. Society’s weird fascination with watching people on camera disrespected, fighting, suffering, and sacrificing themselves for the sake of a storyline curated and edited by someone other than themselves is not reality. It’s manufactured drama. Engineered pain porn. It is consumed and then spills over into how people treat one another in real life. Hint: the many phone video captures of fights, the “two girls one cup” trend, and the Tide Pod Challenge. It birthed the Love & Hip Hop and Baddies shows. It’s out of hand and has got to be stopped. At one point Tyra Lynne Banks looks at the camera and says: “You have no idea what we have planned for Cycle 25, but I want you guys to be just as open as I am now about getting called on my s* for when somebody calls you out on yours. Because that day will come and continue to evolve.” Again, Tyra, girl, stop it. Please salvage what’s left of the legacy you started, retreat to Australia, and serve that hot ice cream in peace. We don’t need to be spoon-fed any more mess via a Cycle 20-anything. Good night, beloved.
Friendship and Business
This documentary made me think about friendship, true friendship, and what happens when friends become collaborators and business partners. When I was younger, I started my production company with my best friend. That was a learning curve. I realized early on that you have to care more about the friendship than the business. You have to understand one another’s working styles and meet in the middle. You have to communicate, even when it’s tough. You have to listen to understand and move as a collective. Obtain a your success is our success mantra. You have to trust each other. Often people start caring more about the business and their individual opinions, and that is when friendships begin to crumble.
Tyra and Jay Manuel seemingly had a really close relationship outside the show. I remember seeing them together quite a bit on media outlets. Hearing how that relationship fractured because of the show makes it clear that, at some point, the machine became more important than the human being. I believe you should be able to build with your friends. That is a dream of mine. But business exposes insecurities and idiosyncrasies. If you are not careful and care for each other, it gets messy. It leaves people thinking it’s not worth mixing friendship and business at all.
This documentary comes from the brilliance of Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, the same folks behind American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden on Netflix. I’m obsessed with them, and the documentary filmmaker in me would love to pick their brains. They create layered, thorough work that allows viewers to form informed opinions. The facts, the raw footage, the interviews, everything is compelling.
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is worth the watch. I watched it simultaneously with one of my best friends, she’s on the West Coast, I’m on the East Coast, and we texted back and forth while watching. I highly recommend this by the way. It is a great way to connect because we love each other down, baby, but can’t always be together. My best friend and I are both Geminis, but we had different opinions about the documentary as a whole, which made it even better. It takes a myriad of people to make up a world, to diversify your friendships. And you know I’m always down for a good debate and friendly banter. Using this documentary as a conversation starter at your next social gathering is perfect to see where folks’ heads are at.
Shout out to Gen Z. I know folks get tired of y’all, but many of you are on this unfiltered journey and I am low-key feeling it. You are not always right, Baby Bop, but you are unapologetically you, and I respect that.
Let me know if or when you watch it and how you feel. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Asé
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