- 7 hours ago
Some photoshoots on “America’s Next Top Model” stirred more controversy than applause. From chilling water scenes to unsettling roleplays, these shoots pushed boundaries in ways that left viewers and contestants uneasy. We’re diving into moments where fashion clashed with ethics and emotions ran high behind the camera.
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00:00I always wondered what I look like as a different race.
00:02Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most controversial
00:06America's Next Top Model photo shoots that left viewers cringing, critics fuming,
00:11and most importantly, the contestants themselves questioning whether any of it was worth it.
00:15I was in the bathroom floor covered with water.
00:17Everything that was on there is all over me now, so that's pretty gross.
00:23The Floating Water Nymphs photo shoot, Cycle 7.
00:27Today, we're going to be floating on water.
00:30Floating on your back, so hopefully you know how to swim.
00:34Submerging young women in freezing cold water for the sake of an ethereal fairytale aesthetic
00:39sounds questionable on paper, and it was even worse in practice.
00:42Paired up to pose as floating water nymphs, the girls were expected to look serene and
00:47otherworldly despite battling near-hypothermic conditions.
00:50Melrose and I go first, and we get into the pool, and the pool is freezing, freezing cold
00:56like ice water.
00:57I love her jaw.
00:58She's like, I don't know.
00:59I hate cold water.
01:00While Eugenia Washington struggled to stay afloat, and produced several blank expressions
01:04before landing a few usable images.
01:06Today was a typical Eugenia shoot.
01:08Flat, boring, and it looked like she was drowning in the water.
01:11The situation turned serious when Carrie D. English began shivering uncontrollably and
01:16had to be pulled from the water with symptoms of hypothermia.
01:18As a model, you need to tell people when you're past your limit. It wasn't just that she was
01:25cold. It wasn't just that her teeth were chattering. She had reached the moment of hypothermia.
01:30Years later, Washington told Business Insider,
01:33quote, I felt like my life was being put on the line for ratings. Hard to argue with that assessment.
01:38The side effects of smoking photoshoot. Cycle 9. Give credit where it's due. The anti-smoking
01:44angle was at least conceptually grounded in something real.
01:47Unfortunately, it is seen as a very glamorous thing to do, and that's why it directly affects
01:53the modeling industry. So we decided to take a stand against smoking.
01:58Each model had to deliver two shots, a glamorous smoking image and a consequence shot depicting
02:03the physical damage smoking causes, including premature aging, lung disease, and facial burns.
02:09It was certainly memorable, but critics questioned whether the imagery crossed into shock value
02:14rather than awareness.
02:14Ebony was this wooden puppet all locked up. If you were going to survive in this business,
02:21you need to let it all go. You just need to perform when you're on set.
02:25To make matters worse, Tyra Banks banned smoking in the model house,
02:28forcing several contestants who smoked to quit cold turkey. So the show essentially manufactured
02:34physical and psychological stress, then asked the models to perform around a habit that they had
02:39just been forced to abandon. Relatable content, truly.
02:42So that's why smoking will be banned as of tomorrow. So if you want to smoke tonight,
02:48get your last puffs, and then it's over.
02:52The Circus Freaks photo shoot, Cycle 7.
02:55You're going to do a shoot that is based on the freak show circuses at the turn of the century.
03:00This shoot is going to be very, very dark and moody.
03:03Cycle 7 was apparently committed to making everyone uncomfortable because this is not the first and
03:09won't be the last entry from that season on this list. The contestants were styled as exaggerated
03:13circus freak archetypes, referencing the kinds of sideshow spectacles that historically exploited
03:18people with unusual physical traits.
03:26Some transformations were particularly awkward. Contestant Meg Morales,
03:30for example, was styled as a bearded lady. Even in the context of avant-garde fashion,
03:35the imagery leaned heavily on stereotypes associated with old-fashioned freak shows.
03:39Melrose did a phenomenal job. She had an ugly face, but yet she just leaned into it and she just
03:48hit it out of the ballpark. The concept also clashed with modern conversations about representation
03:54and dignity. What might once have been considered edgy editorial felt more like a throwback to a time
04:00when difference itself was treated as spectacle. So if you're feeling insecure, you're the bearded lady.
04:05And the bearded lady in the circus probably doesn't want to be there. So you put that into her story
04:10and
04:11you give her every single thing that you're feeling. The Political Controversies photoshoot,
04:16Cycle 8. Reality TV and politics rarely mix gracefully, and this photoshoot proved why.
04:22Contestants were assigned opposing sides of major political debates, including gun rights,
04:27same-sex marriage, fur fashion, and abortion. I'm going to assign each and every one of you
04:32a different political view, and it's important for you to sell it even if you do not agree with it.
04:39The idea was to teach the models how to make a strong visual statement,
04:42but translating complex policy debates into a single image was always going to be messy.
04:48Some photos bordered on cartoonish literalism. The late J.L. Strauss famously posed chained to the
04:54doors of an abortion clinic. Do you feel very passionately about that?
04:57No. I feel the exact opposite. Find something that you feel that passionately about that you
05:02would be chained to a door for. If it doesn't speak to you here, I'm not going to see it
05:06here.
05:06And while Brittany Hatch's pro-fur image looked polished from a fashion perspective,
05:11glamorization of the fur industry has aged poorly since then. Instead of thoughtful discourse,
05:16the result was a muddled collection of images guaranteed to offend somebody.
05:20I like the smiling. Why don't you guys have a happy moment? Lesbians aren't serious all the time.
05:25The biracial Hapa photoshoot, Cycle 13. Racially insensitive photoshoots were unfortunately a
05:32common occurrence on America's Next Top Model. For today's photoshoot, you girls are going to
05:36undergo a transformation and actually have to portray two very different distinct races.
05:42While visiting Maui in Cycle 13, the final six contestants were assigned mixed ethnic identities
05:48for a shoot inspired by the Hawaiian concept of Hapa, referring to people of multiracial heritage.
05:53On paper, the idea sounded like a celebration of diversity. In practice, it relied heavily on
05:59altering the model's appearances with darker makeup, wigs, and stereotypical styling meant to
06:04represent different cultural backgrounds.
06:06Nicole is Malagasy in Japanese. It might not even be a necessary exact of what they've worn even in the
06:12past. It's a fashion interpretation of it. The execution revealed an alarming lack of research into
06:18the culture's being celebrated. The costuming leaned heavily on tired visual shorthand, reducing complex
06:24cultural identities to costume choices. This one remains firmly lodged in the show's hall of shame.
06:31I think you actually perfectly embody Native American and Indian.
06:34The model stereotypes photoshoot, Cycle 7 again.
06:38Today, we're going to do the most controversial shoot we've ever done on America's Next Top Model.
06:44Today, we're doing model stereotypes.
06:47This time, the show decided to confront the darker side of the modeling industry.
06:51Except confronting it and sensationalizing it are two very different things.
06:55Meg Morales was labeled the drug addict, posing as if she had overdosed,
06:59while Michelle Babin was tasked with portraying the bulimic, hunched over a toilet.
07:03Hey, Michelle, it looks really good. This is disturbingly amazing.
07:08The intention was to highlight the darker side of the fashion world,
07:12yet the execution veered into graphic territory that many viewers found uncomfortable.
07:16Rather than sparking thoughtful conversation about mental health or substance use disorder,
07:20the exaggerated scenarios risked trivializing those real human experiences.
07:25Amanda doesn't understand how to use her body.
07:27Right now, what you're doing is this, and it's boring. I need...
07:31Ugh!
07:31The resulting photos were certainly memorable, though mostly for the uneasy reaction they provoked among audiences.
07:38It's a good shot, but it's a scary shot, but that means you got it. You really went for it.
07:42This is what this whole exercise was about, putting that acting into it, too. You got an emotion out of
07:48us.
07:48All right.
07:48The homeless fashion photo shoot, Cycle 10.
07:51Few America's Next Top Model shoots have generated the kind of sustained discomfort this one has.
07:56The Cycle 10 concept placed models in designer clothing, styled them as unhoused women,
08:01and photographed them alongside real unhoused individuals in a city setting.
08:05This is a fashion image still, but it's a more somber mood for you.
08:09They're all working around you. It's about them being fabulous, and you embodying this mood.
08:15The fashion industry's complicated relationship with poverty as aesthetic is already a fraught conversation.
08:21But literally involving real unhoused people as background elements in luxury garments while models posed took it somewhere genuinely troubling.
08:29All these things were going through my head about how, when I was young, kids would make fun of me
08:33and say,
08:33Oh, like, what's the one? She lives in the shelter, and she's going to her shelter.
08:37The people featured in those images were not contestants with agency over their participation.
08:42The disconnect between the glamour being sold and the real hardship being borrowed from could not have been more glaring.
08:48I felt that Marvita could draw upon some seriously profound life experiences, and it read on film.
08:56The graveyard coffin photoshoot, Cycle 4.
08:59These are the seven deadly sins, and with seven of you here today, each and every one of you are
09:04going to have to portray one of these deadly sins while looking deadly gorgeous.
09:10Posing as corpses in coffins to represent the seven deadly sins is a concept that could theoretically work in a
09:17different context with a different set of circumstances.
09:20But Cycle 4 contestant Kaylin Rondeau received devastating news that a close high school friend of hers had died just
09:26before the shoot.
09:27Today was probably the worst day I've had since I've been here.
09:31You know, I find out that one of my friends at home has died.
09:35It's really hard to have a friend just ripped away from you and you not even see it coming.
09:41The sensible thing to do would have been to pause production or adjust the concept.
09:45But no, the show decided to have Kaylin portray Rath while lying in a literal open grave.
09:50She delivered what judges called one of the best photos of the cycle.
09:54But the human cost of that image is impossible to ignore.
09:57What happened yesterday, I think, was more like an actor really pushing through something that was going on personally.
10:04What happened, honey?
10:05No, it's serious.
10:06Oh, you don't have to talk about that.
10:08It's okay.
10:09The debate over whether the show owed her more than that has never really gone away.
10:13The crime scene photoshoot, Cycle 8.
10:16You girls are all going to be crime scene victims.
10:21You're all going to be dead in your photo.
10:24And the twist is, you've all killed each other.
10:27This one has haunted fans for years, and for good reason.
10:31Models were assigned different causes of death and asked to make their staged corpse look editorial.
10:36One of the contestants, Dionne Walters, was cast as a gunshot victim,
10:40photographed as if she had been shot in the head.
10:42It's kind of scary. Everybody's kind of good today.
10:44I don't know what that means, exactly.
10:45That means nobody's going home.
10:47What production knew, and apparently set aside, was that Walters' mother had been left with paralysis
10:52after being shot when Walters was just six years old.
10:55Meanwhile, J.L. Strauss arrived on set just days after losing a close friend to a drug overdose,
11:01and was still expected to play dead for the camera.
11:03The show's willingness to exploit personal drama for a compelling storyline was laid completely bare here.
11:09You got into a place that is really, really heavy, and it allowed you not to focus on what you
11:16were doing.
11:17And it's important to use that emotion without it overwhelming you.
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11:37The ethnicity-swapping Got Milk photoshoot, Cycle 4.
11:41The challenge here really is taking on the persona of that other ethnicity while in the photograph and owning it.
11:50Framed as a Got Milk campaign celebrating diversity, the contestants were transformed to portray women of different ethnic backgrounds.
11:57These transformations involved darkening the model's skin, altering facial features with makeup and prosthetics,
12:03and styling them to represent cultures they did not belong to while holding children from those cultures.
12:08I'm having to deal with this little person. It's very challenging and very difficult, and he just didn't want to
12:12cooperate.
12:13Look over there! Look, it's a bird!
12:15Darkening a white model's skin to portray a black woman is blackface.
12:19Using prosthetics to simulate Asian or Indian features is racial caricature.
12:23The show called it a celebration. Critics and audiences called it what it was.
12:27And a little island girl smile, just with your eyes, you know?
12:31Shockingly, they repeated this concept with the aforementioned HAPA photoshoot in Cycle 13,
12:36seemingly having learned nothing the first time around.
12:39This one wasn't just a low point for America's Next Top Model. It was a low point full stop.
12:44This shot is absolutely breathtaking. I don't even see a black girl, I see an Asian woman,
12:50and that's what this is about, about embodying it from the inside out. You nailed this.
12:55Think we missed a photoshoot that made your jaw drop? Let us know in the comments.
13:01We hope you made sure it was great.
13:03Thank you, Sirius, you have some music abusoED!
13:04I think it's not as big as supposed to be.
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