America’s Next Top Model Cycle 9: Sarah Hartshorne’s Memoir & Interview [REPLAY]

Summary

Glamorous Trash: America’s Next Top Model Cycle 9 – Sarah Hartshorne’s Memoir & Interview [REPLAY]

Podcast: Glamorous Trash: A Celebrity Memoir Podcast
Host: Chelsea Devantez
Guest Co-host: H. Alan Scott
Episode Airdate: February 27, 2026
Featured Book: You Want to Be on Top: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Knots: Becoming America’s Next Top Model by Sarah Hartshorne

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Episode Overview

This episode is a special replay featuring an in-depth book club discussion and a first-ever public release of Chelsea’s interview with Sarah Hartshorne, contestant on America's Next Top Model (ANTM) Cycle 9. Together, Chelsea, comedian/writer H. Alan Scott, and Sarah herself unpack the dark corners, astonishing behind-the-scenes stories, and psychological impact of participating in reality TV at its most intense. The episode critically examines Sarah’s memoir, discussing reality TV ethics, Tyra Banks’ complicated legacy, body image, coming out, and the lasting trauma of early-2000s television production culture.

Trigger Warning: Disordered eating and diet culture discussed extensively.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Revisiting America’s Next Top Model Cycle 9 and Sarah’s Memoir

(Starts ~ [05:00])

• Sarah Hartshorne is introduced as ANTM Cycle 9's "plus-size" contestant and author of a newly released memoir, giving a detailed, scene-by-scene retelling of her time on the show.
• Chelsea and H. Alan note the nostalgia and horror of rewatching ANTM from a modern perspective.
  • Chelsea: “America’s Next Top Model is unbelievable. Like, they should have put everyone in jail every single episode.” [06:25]
• The book provides a raw look at the wild west era of reality TV—shock value, manipulation, and harmful industry norms.

2. Behind-the-Scenes Production Tactics and Psychological Manipulation

(Multiple segments, notably [10:28], [18:33], [24:16])

• Gripping details about psychological pressure: contestants isolated for hours, forbidden to speak unless cameras were rolling, and threatened with ruinous lawsuits for any breach.
  • Sarah (quoting ANTM producer): “We know you don’t [have $5 million]. We know about all of your financial information. None of you have $5 million…we’ll sue your kids. And by that, I mean your future kids.” [24:03]
• Bizarre "house rules": contestants must be mic’d at all times, spend required time in confessionals, and "consider showering together, you know, for the environment." [37:14]
• Cultish conditions compared to “trauma bonding” and psychological breaking.
  • Chelsea: “They broke me down and took advantage of my trauma. It took years of hard work and therapy to find myself again.” [73:59]
• Sarah (interview, on post-show NDAs): “We did sign this contract that did really tie our hands in a lot of ways, but it also expired after the final episode of the show aired.” [86:16]

3. Body Image, “Plus-Size” Labeling, and Disordered Eating

([11:24]–[13:58], [55:17]–[57:06])

• Sarah, size 6–12, cast as a “plus-size” contestant, pressured to perform both insecurity and body positivity for the cameras—before “body positivity” entered mainstream culture.
  • Chelsea: “Watching this footage back, it’s so shocking to see that she was their plus-size contestant … she just looks so similar to all of the other girls.” [12:58]
  • Sarah: “They wanted me to be very body positive, very pro plus size...I literally hadn’t seen a Dove commercial. I didn’t believe it myself. And so I couldn’t do it.” [91:04]
• Inadequate food stipends ($37/day), expected to buy and prepare all meals—fueling cycles of disordered eating.
  • Sarah: “It was a cash stipend for which we were supposed to pay for our food…for those eliminated, we did not get paid for those [hotel weeks].” [93:47]
• Contestants routinely shamed about their bodies, forced to discuss insecurities and framed as cautionary tales.

4. Identity, Sexuality & Queer Erasure

([47:54], [116:00])

• Several cast members came out as queer or bisexual on camera, but all of those conversations were cut from TV.
  • Sarah: “None of it [aired]…I really don’t know [why]…my only guess is maybe they were trying to go for an innocent...angle with me.” [116:08]
  • Chelsea: “It’s such a sad thing.” [116:21]
• Sarah’s personal coming out journey is highlighted in the memoir as a major, healing realization.

5. Tyra Banks’ Legacy: Visionary, Villain, or Both?

([29:43], [73:59], [109:00])

• Tyra is discussed as an iconic but controversial figure: a Black woman breaking ground in TV, yet responsible for deeply problematic content (e.g., blackface modeling shoots, public shaming, insensitive challenges).
  • Chelsea: “Katie [Perry] really had a moment where the love was genuine...that’s Tyra…for years…people didn’t realize, like, actually, I think you’re…forcing something really bad.” [29:59]
  • Sarah: “She does bear maybe an unfair level of the brunt of the blame…there was a whole team of producers, network execs, sponsors…pushing wheels forward.” [109:00]
• Memorable, “kooky” Tyra moments discussed with both humor and criticism (“We were all rooting for you!”).

6. Post-Show Dissonance: Broken Promises and the Aftermath

([65:35], [69:10], [105:45])

• Eliminated contestants effectively “detained” in hotel rooms, no keys or communication, for weeks to months as "decoys".
  • Sarah: “She didn’t have the key. And then they brought her to China. They kept her for almost two months in solitary confinement in a hotel room.” [94:55]
• Disappointment versus reality of a promised modeling career—agencies demand Sarah lose more weight, grow out her Tyra-mandated haircut, and model’s post-show success remains elusive or modest.
  • Sarah: “None of them seemed to care about Top Model either, except as an explanation for why my hair was too short.” [69:15]
• Grievances about lack of residuals—$37/day cash stipend is all they ever receive.

7. Reality TV Culture: Then and Now

([27:25], [97:28], [99:18])

• Contrasted old-school and new-era reality TV exploitation—reality stars now chase influencer fame, but the underlying machinery has changed little.
• Some shows (e.g., Great British Bake Off, RuPaul’s Drag Race) show glimpses of a kinder model, but high-stakes, emotionally manipulative formats persist.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Chelsea (on psychological control):
  “They broke me down and took advantage of my trauma. It took years of hard work and therapy to find myself again.” [73:59]

• Sarah (on house imprisonment):
  “She didn’t have the key. And then they brought her to China. They kept her for almost two months in solitary confinement in a hotel room that she did not have the key to…” [94:55]

• H. Alan Scott (on body shame):
  “As a fat person sometimes I’m very embarrassed…I won’t eat and walk half the time because…there are things I won’t do because I’m self-conscious…” [55:19]

• On body positivity pressure:
  Sarah: “They wanted me to be very body positive, very pro plus size…they wanted me to be like, these skinny bitches don’t eat. I do. Curvy girls rock…I literally hadn’t seen a Dove commercial. I didn’t believe it myself. And so I couldn’t do it.” [91:04]

• On Tyra Banks:
  Sarah: “Tyra Banks set out to change the fashion industry, and she did it…it’s a complicated question. On one hand, she provided me one of the biggest opportunities of my life. I owe her a lot…on the other, I lost myself on the show, they broke me down and took advantage of my trauma.” [73:59]

• On career outcome:
  Sarah: “We want fat, happy girls with fat, happy teeth and hair.” [69:47]

• On reality TV contracts:
  Sarah: “We did sign this contract that did really tie our hands…But it also expired after the final episode of the show aired…” [86:16]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Episode Introduction & Book Selection [02:00–06:10]
• ANTM’s Cultural Place & Production Absurdities [06:09–11:24]
• Body Image & Casting as “Plus Size” [11:24–13:58]
• Isolation & Psychological Manipulation [18:33–24:16]
• Threats of Lawsuits & NDAs [24:16–27:05]
• Tyra Banks, Host Persona & Race [29:43–37:14]
• House Rules & Privacy Concerns [37:14–38:40]
• Coming Out & Queer Erasure on Reality TV [47:54–49:17], [116:00–117:23]
• Twiggy as a Judge; Unrealistic Standards [50:38–51:33]
• Extreme Food Scarcity & Eating Disorders [55:17–57:06]
• Elimination, Aftermath & Modeling Industry [65:35–70:17]
• Tyra’s Complicated Legacy—Book’s Conclusion [73:59–74:27], [109:00–110:09]
• Sarah Hartshorne Interview Begins [85:09]
• Legal Aftermath, NDAs, and Memoir Publication [86:07–89:36]
• Life After ANTM, Reality TV Today [97:28–99:18]
• Lightning Round with Sarah Hartshorne [117:38–118:48]

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Episode Tone and Style

• Unvarnished, witty camaraderie, with moments of gallows humor and raw personal vulnerability.
• Chelsea and H. Alan balance empathetic insight with sharp pop culture critique and “trash-talking” playfulness.
• Sarah’s candor in the interview provides depth, validation, and a sense of closure for reality TV fans and skeptics alike.

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Takeaways

• ANTM Cycle 9, as experienced by Sarah, was a traumatizing, exploitative, yet culturally landmark example of 2000s reality television.
• Body positivity was weaponized as a storyline, long before contestants or the public had the vocabulary to discuss it meaningfully.
• Tyra Banks’ complicated influence—as pioneer, mentor, and enabler of televised cruelty—remains a contentious legacy, and production accountability is often missing from public narratives.
• The choices made by producers—psychological manipulation, isolation, pitting contestants against each other—illuminated the darkest side of televised “transformation” culture.
• Both Sarah and the co-hosts land on a bittersweet but grateful perspective: “So here’s what I would say. Thank you. Pay me.” [78:24]

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Recommended For

• Fans and critics of reality TV
• Readers interested in behind-the-scenes media ethics
• Anyone reflecting on early-‘00s pop culture, disordered eating, or queer coming-of-age stories

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For more on Sarah’s story, pick up her memoir via bookshop.org or your favorite retailer — but don’t forget to leave a review!

Transcript

[A]

Hi, this is Hannah Berner, co host of Gigli Squad. Let's be honest, we've all done things in our lives that may have just followed the crowd, like drinking matcha, even if you think it tastes like grass or pretending skinny jeans were actually comfortable. Have we been doing the same thing with Zero Sugar Cola? Last year, people across America took the Pepsi Challenge. No labels, no bias. Judged on taste alone, 66% of participants agreed. Pepsi Zero sugar tastes better than Coke Zero sugar and Pepsi Zero sugar won in every single market. Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today. You deserve taste. You deserve Pepsi. This week on the podcast there is so much America's Next Top Model in the air that we have brought an episode out from behind the Paywall, which is our interview with Sarah Hartshorn, who was a contestant on America's next top model cycle 9 and wrote a tell all memoir about it. So if you are a fan of the interview, sign up on Patreon. Sign up on Apple Podcast subscriptions. This is bonus content that we do all of the time and this episode came out this summer actually. But because of all the talk in the air, I've had a couple of requests to do this book and here is my gift to you. We already covered this book, so for today's episode we are replaying our recap episode of the entire memoir and for the first time ever, releasing from behind the Paywall my interview with Sarah Hartshorn where we dive even deeper into what happened to her on America's Next Top Model. Welcome to Glamorous Trash. This is a podcast that book clubs, viral articles, celebrity memoirs and trashy discourse to elevate your life. I'm your host, Chelsea devontez. I'm a TV writer, comedian, filmmaker, author and sometimes I'm in stuff too. And today we are book clubbing. You Want to Be on Top A memoir of makeovers, Manipulation and knots. Becoming America's Next Top Model by Sarah Hartshorn. She was in season nine of America's Next Top Model. She has now written a tell all play by play of what that season was like. I was riveted. The book was just published on July 8th and we have an entire conversation with Sarah herself about some extra BTS and questions I had for her. It is up right now for subscribers on Patreon and Apple podcast subscriptions. So go check that out after the episode. Now this book, it has Tyra Banks tea, queer coming out stories and reality TV tales that are honestly unbelievable. And please know there is a trigger warning for disordered eating and diet culture discussion. So please take care when listening and let's dive in. My guest today is H. Allen Scott. They are a comedian, writer, and pop culture know it all. Who's never been wrong, don't fact check that. They host Newsweek's Parting Shop podcast and out on the Lanai, a Golden Girls podcast. They've appeared on shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen, and starred in the documentary Latter Day Jew, which follows their journey from being raised Mormon to converting to Judaism, surviving cancer, and celebrating their bar mitzvah. Sorry. That is unbelievable. When is. When are you writing a memoir?

[B]

After I had cancer a while back. I'm fine. I got a lot of offers, but I don't know. I feel like I need to be older.

[A]

I wrote one.

[B]

I know, and yours is amazing. I know. No, I need to do it. Maybe we'll talk book agents after this.

[A]

I think we should. I introduce all my guests who are friends of mine with the story of how we first met.

[B]

Can I wait? Before you even get to that, I'm sorry, I'm taking over your podcast. Can I just say how much I love you and how much I love that you're doing this podcast and you're putting. Because from the moment we met, I have always thought this girl needs, like, this personality, needs to be on everything. You are so much fun. So I'm just so glad to be with you today, but also that you're doing this.

[A]

Wow. That's how I feel about you. And, okay, so this is my memory of us meeting. I don't even know if you'll have the other piece of it. I just have an image of being, I think, in the audience at the Virgil, but I'm standing up, and I think we're talking about Golden Girls. Yes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And that's it. And I'm like, how'd we get there? How did we find each other?

[B]

I don't know how we got there. I don't know how it found each other. But I know why we connected. Because when I'm in a room like the Virgil, often surrounded by heterosexuals, I immediately go to the girl that's gonna understand my Sephora addiction, who's gonna understand my golden girl's background, who maybe is gonna take a moment to understand that we need to make fun of the straight men surrounding us. And that is why I immediately went to you, because that's just what I do. That's my safe space. That's my trauma reaction in spaces is to immediately, not necessarily always go for the girl, but go for the One that I know immediately is gonna be like, we can talk about lip gloss. We can probably talk about politics and probably can talk about someone shitty.

[A]

You know what I talk all the time about how my dearest friends came from sharing a lip gloss in a strange space. Yes, that must have been us, because we were complete strangers. And then we sort of watched you online, become an icon. And so I was just looking for a book so I could drag you on this podcast and reconnect.

[B]

And I will always go anywhere you tell me to. I'm a big champion of yours. And I loved. I have to say, this is. This is the type of person that I am because I. I talk people for a living. But, like, yes, we got notes. Things are. Things are documented. There are things there's. I wrote over this because I did really enjoy this, but what I also enjoyed about this so much is that it wasn't necessarily like a trash book. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It wasn't. It was kind of almost like. And this is something that I love about what I do online. What you and I bond over is the nostalgia for, like, a different time. You know what I mean? And what Sarah does in this book so, so, so well is that she takes us back to that era of reality television and gives us a glimpse behind the scenes, but also reminds us how fucked up that era was, but how fascinating it was, too.

[A]

Yes, I think that is so well said because I. I went back and rewatched her season for this episode, and I really don't even have words. I was watching it. I was like, I can't believe this was ever on tv like it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

America's Next Top Model is unbelievable. Like, they should have put everyone in jail every single episode.

[B]

You know what's crazy is I watched America's Next Top Model very casually back in the day, but it was on in an era when I was a young, poor person trying to exist in the world of comedy in a not great way because of all the straight dudes I previously mentioned. And so I didn't have a lot of money to be able to keep watching America's Next Top Model because I didn't have a television in New York for a long time, so it wasn't a part of necessarily my experience. But my boyfriend and one of my best friends, Naomi, they both bond because they grew up. They are of the generation. They're like 10 years younger than me. Brag that they grew up on America's Next Top Model. And it is their vocabulary as soon as I told them I was doing this, they told me every last detail about Sarah, about this season, about literally everything.

[A]

They know their take on season nine because, you know, the show's been going for a while at this point, but it has fully peaked and petered out.

[B]

Yes, they were like, it's fucked up. That era is fucked up. But you can also see that because the show isn't where it was when it started, and it became the juggernaut that it was very early on. And I think you see this in watching Sarah's season. You can see the show desperately trying to get back to the relevance that it previously had early on in the early boom, you know.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And they're doing so many stunts. Like, for some reason, they put all the girls on a cruise ship to find the first 10 or whatever. And then they're filming scenes of like, this can't go in your luggage and get on the cruise ship. And I've worked on a cruise ship. Like, they have. Like.

[B]

Have you?

[A]

Yeah, it's pretty intense, but it's like, there's a lot of international logistics to that also that they can just, like, have the gimmick of a cruise ship. And then her season is about, like, environmental conservative, like, conservatism pro, you know, try and fight against climate change. But then they're on a cruise ship.

[B]

On a cruise ship, which of the worst things.

[A]

And so it makes no sense.

[B]

You can totally take this out if you need to, but have you watched that documentary about the missing Amy on Netflix?

[A]

I watched it last night. Chris derosa told me to.

[B]

Chelsea.

[A]

Yeah, okay, so listen, I'm just going to. I'm going to plug my own shit. I. I shot a pilot, an independent pilot this year about my time working on a cruise ship called Maritime.

[B]

Can I watch it?

[A]

Oh, my God. I will link you. And it's called Maritime because people don't realize that when you're on the waters, it's maritime law.

[B]

There are everything.

[A]

No laws. Maritime law means if someone gets murdered, we investigate it, if we feel like it.

[B]

It's quite literally the gay bar, like, half an hour before last call. Like, anything goes.

[A]

Anything goes. And to keep the crew members happy and to stop us from rioting and to kind of quell all the mobs that run. It's like a constant race war. And that's a joke, but also very serious. They would sell us bottles of wine for a dollar and beers for 20 so that, like, everyone working would just kind of drink their lives away.

[B]

It was like A shooting of the Housewives franchise or something. Like, just get them as drunk as possible and fight, fight, fight.

[A]

Yes. And these top bottles go on the cruise ship when there's a real cruise going on. And the. The thing that made me laugh so much is that cruise ships play 24. Seven.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Mambo number five. And who let the dogs out and they can't get them to turn off the music for filming. I mean, just. What a nightmare. What an absolute nightmare.

[B]

When I was reading that part of the book with the cruise, because I. I get offered, especially Golden Girl stuff. I get offered cruise stuff a lot. And. No, I don't, because it terrifies me. I'm worried about dying, but I'm more so worried because I'm the type of bitch, like, after a show, a meet and greet situation, I won't stick around. Not because I don't like the people who are in the crowd, but because I have intense anxiety. So the idea of being stuck on a cruise with people who just saw me perform, sometimes in drag, sometimes not, that's terrifying. I don't want to be stuck with anyone.

[A]

Yeah, do. Absolutely do not go on a cruise. And I will say I was on there when I was 24 and unmedicated. And if there's. There are a group of people who witnessed me in that state who were like, the craziest bitch alive has a job. Like, how did that woman continue her life?

[B]

Lorazepan all day.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. So the big thing with Sarah and what I loved reading about, even when it was painful, is that she fluctuates between a size 6 and a size 12, according to the book. And everyone is like, you should be a model. And she kind of doesn't really have a gauge on what that means for her. And also, you should be a model is such a ubiquitous phrase. And we have a Dringo, which is where you drink and take one of our memoir bingos, because of course, we get an exact weight drop on page 17. That is the number one dringo of every book. And she said, as someone who didn't know if she wanted to be a model who tipped the scales at 160 pounds, I had no idea what to say. Luckily, I was given a lot of time to come up with something. I sat there for six hours before she goes into the audition. And Sarah basically is their plus size contestant of this season.

[B]

They always had one. So, I mean, on one hand, here's the thing. On one hand, I'm disgusted by it as a. As a fat person. But on the other hand, I am also like, very, very aware of the era and the culture in which we were living in. What year was this?

[A]

This was like, this was 2007. So, you know, not that long ago. It's like two decades ago. Ground. Ground us in time of where we are.

[B]

Okay, so Obama had given the speech, but he wasn't quite president yet. Yet still, I remember men who rejected me in 2007. Like, that's how fresh it is in my mind.

[A]

I could probably recite one of the monologues I used to do auditions with. Like, that shit's still right? Yeah. And so. And yet when you look back, you're like, well, this was brutal. And trying to fuck during those times, which I consider coming of age years for us.

[B]

I mean, it really, it very much was coming up. I think I was doing. I mean, I was definitely doing standup in New York at this time. Desperately trying to, you know, can I be crude here? Can I be crude?

[A]

Oh, you can extra be crude.

[B]

Desperately trying to suck a dick after the show. Like, I was doing everything.

[A]

Oh, my gosh, no wonder we like each other. I was also desperately trying to suck dick. And people just, people are like, yeah, but of course you could. No, no. I tried for so many dicks that turned me down.

[B]

Pun intended, but it was hard.

[A]

When you're funny, they don't want your funny lips on their dick. They don't like that.

[B]

I found a niche. It's another episode, but it's desperate straight men. But. But

[A]

that was my niche to script that. If a producer is listening, we're right there. So, yes, she's basically the plus size contestant. And listen, it's so hard to determine, like, you know, what's a straight size, what's a plus size? What, what? Where are we at with body image? In a terrible place. And we were even worse back then. And I think watching this footage back, it's so shocking to see that she was their plus size contestant and she was supposed to be pushing body positivity forward because she just looks so similar to all of the other girls. It really made me think about how Jessica Simpson, when she was in those jeans at like a cook off and we all called her fat and we all did, and I mean the magazines did, and we just read it and said, okay. But reading in her memoir and looking back at those pictures and realizing she was a size 4 at the time, and that's kind of the feeling I had when I was reading about Sarah's season. But then watching it on screen.

[B]

We were so disgusting in this era. I look back at now. Cause I'm doing a thing on Freakier Friday. And I've been looking back at a lot of the interviews with Lindsay Lohan and stuff. And I just. I'm just appalled at how oftentimes straight older men would talk to some of these women in pop culture and in that era and how disgusting and blatant and how nowadays HR would fire that person if those questions were asked or put on air or done anything with. Like, they would.

[A]

They would. They are 25.

[B]

I mean, 20.

[A]

20.

[B]

Maybe. 20. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't know.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

I really don't know. I would hope so.

[A]

We're lost in the sauce right now. We really are as bad as. And I think that's the other thing that I asked there about in the interview, which is that we hear now that reality TV filming conditions are horrible for the people who go on them. Well, if they've gotten better, where they started is horrific. On season nine, she writes this. After a few days after arriving in Puerto Rico, I found myself blindfolded and forbidden to speak on a bus full of other young, sweaty, beautiful girls. There are a lot of moments from my time filming America's Next Top Model that, looking back, didn't age well. But even at the time, this felt deranged. And basically they were not allowed to speak to each other unless the cameras were rolling. So they would sit in rooms with each other in silence for sometimes up to 17 hours a day. Okay, this feels like a good time to take a quick break. It has been five months with my Quint Ultra Stretch Pont super wide leg pants. Happy anniversary to us, I guess. No, it's been five months with my favorite pants. And they haven't pilled or fallen apart. When I washed them, they're still my favorites. They were less than 50 bucks each. I now have three pairs, one in every color. So when my new foster fail dog happened to eat a hole in my bedding comforter, I turned to Quince to replace it. So don't worry, she's getting dog training. And then as for the comforter, I was like, okay, Quince makes good pants. Let's see if they can make a good bedding set. So I ordered their bamboo duvet cover. And I love it. I absolutely love it. It just feels really clean and luxurious while still being really soft and smooth. Big fan. And here's the thing. I used my own glamorous trash code to buy this bedding. So thank you Quince and I love them. Quince works directly with safe ethical factories and all of the products are super high quality and built to last so I love it. Refresh your wardrobe and or you're betting with quince. Go to quince.com glamorous for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Quince Q U I n c e.com glamorous to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com glamorous I have not seen the sun a lot lately. Not great. I have been working inside film studios and podcast studios kind of every second of the day for a month. So my skin has been suffering except Ritual Hycera's skin supplement has been saving me. It is a clinically proven way to support skin hydration with science backed benefits like reducing wrinkles and improving skin smoothness. It is very important to me that products like this contain high quality clean ingredients and all of Ritual's products are just that. All of their products are vegan, GMO free and tested for heavy metals and common allergies. Your skin always starts below the surface and Rituals Hysera features clinically studied key ingredients to help support moisturized skin that glows. In a clinical study, Hysera led to a 2.9 increase in facial skin smoothness within 90 days as compared to a placebo and subjects also reported an improvement in skin elasticity, glow and radiance in 90 days. Start Hysara to support your glow without compromising on clean science. For a limited time, save 25% on your first month at ritual.com glamorous that's ritual.com glamorous for 25% off your first month. I'd have been born just playing my trash. Okay, let's dive back into the episode.

[B]

Chelsea I watch a lot of documentaries and made for television movies often starring Mira Sorvino about human trafficking. And this is what this sounds like. It sounds like an episode from a Mira Sorvino Lifetime television movie about human trafficking.

[A]

Yeah. And they keep them awake because you might film there's multiple accounts where she's like can I go to the bathroom? And some you feel sad because it's some young PA who's working for the corporation and they're like don't let them go pee. And then some young PA is like I'm sorry you can't go pee. Yeah, cannot speak. Also they would sometimes give them their ipods and they had to beg to get their books like to Get a book to read. So they would just be sitting there doing nothing.

[B]

It sounds like some producer saw George Bush's like, torture during the Iraq war stuff and was like, you know what? Not all bad ideas.

[A]

Yeah, this could be good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, I have to ask you about this. So they. They take a psych evaluation, which we all know they do for all this.

[B]

Have you had to do this? I've had to do this.

[A]

Okay, so here's. Here's my question for you. She wrote some of the questions down like they were asking her, like, do you think people are trying to get you to change your mind? How many people in the world do you cheat on their taxes? Things like that. I was asked that exact last question on my application at Target. I am not joking. I had to take a Target.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So basically, like when you applied to work at Target and this was what. I don't know, when I was like 18.

[B]

God, I wanted to work at Target so badly.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They.

[A]

I didn't get a call back. And you. You went to. There's digital screens.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And you have to take this like 20. 20 question tests before Target will like, let you work there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I now realize that on questions where it would say, like, how many people cheat on their taxes? When I wrote probably everybody, that was an indicator that I would cheat their rules.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you had to press the button that says no one cheats or like only a little bit so that you don't believe in breaking rules.

[B]

Insane.

[A]

Insane. So that's just what I had to do for Target. And a longer version is what she had to do for America's Next Top Model. What was your test like?

[B]

It was similar. I mean, when I won't say what it was for because Wink.

[A]

But desperate men.

[B]

But you can tell because, like, I'm old, er, and I've been around the block and I talk to people for a living. And so when I was in the situation, talking with this psych person, here I am in the back of my head thinking, you're being paid by a production company to ask these. Like, you're. Yeah, you're a part. You're essentially a producer here interviewing me for this. And so these questions and my responses. And so like, I'm in my head because of that. I'm trying to think of like, what a. I mean, how old was Sarah when she did this? 20. Something like. 20.

[A]

Yeah. She's like 20 years old.

[B]

Yeah, 20 years old. 20 year old's not gonna know that answering these questions. So they're Just gonna answer any flipping way that they want. Whereas me, I'm, you know, 23, but yet older. Like, older than Sarah, answering these questions. I'm smarter. I'm knowing where. Where these things are going. And it's just. I wouldn't say it's manipulative because it is a part of the process. But I also fully understand that it is not an actual logistical psychological evaluation. It is quite literally a producer gauging information to see if you could do xyz. That's what it is.

[A]

I would say it is manipulative because the psych eval makes you think. Like, they're making sure I am mentally sane to go through this process. Sleep deprivation as I try and model for two months. But they're not. They're trying to see how you're gonna act on camera. And she had a really funny answer. She wrote that. She answers like, yes, I believe people are trying to control our minds and the way we think all the time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're like, why did you answer that? And she's like, but isn't that what you're trying to do on this show? And they were like, yeah.

[B]

Well, I mean, she writes later on, this is a quote that, like, really just stuck out to me when I was reading this. And it fits. It fits here. She was like, going on a reality show is like throwing a hot stone into an already boiling cauldron of soup. I was more visible than ever, but I was also losing huge swaths of my personality. Like, it's so wild to think that even through these little questionnaires stuff, you lose your personality. And you start getting in your head about, well, what is my personality? Who actually am I?

[A]

And when you have producers telling you you're going to be this one, you're going to be this one that you would listen. This actually segues wonderfully into something horrific, which is that they narrow everyone down into, like, the girls who are actually really gonna appear in the competition. And the other plus size contestant gets sent home, and Sarah stays. And then they bring them into a room where they have a producer for hours at a time saying things like this. America's Next Top Model is sitting inside this room. They said, really think about that. Look around. This is your competition. You are the select few. Does anyone know how many girls tried out for the show? A lot. Thousands and thousands. Ten thousand in Boston alone. And they keep going and they keep going and they keep going. And then they said, this experience can only be what you make of it. Suddenly their tones and Demeanor shifted. They had been serious and kind. And now there was something else in the air. One of them stepped out of the line they'd been in. That information is worth more than you know. If you do anything to put that information at risk, we will sue you for $5 million. And then he said, yeah, but if you're thinking, I don't have $5 million, we know you don't. We know about all of your financial information. None of you have $5 million. None of your families have $5 million. What you need to understand is that we won't just sue you. We'll sue your entire family. And I don't just mean your parents. We'll sue your kids. And by that, I mean your future kids. We'll see your children. We'll sue your children's children, will sue your children's children's children's.

[B]

What is this, North Korea?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, like. And then for hours at a time, they say that to them to get them to listen. So no bathroom, no phones. Do what we say or we'll sue you. Or we'll sue you. Like, don't speak out. Don't ask for things.

[B]

The crazy thing is all of these. I'm gonna call them kids. All of These kids are 18, 19, 20, 21, maybe. Maybe some are in their mid-20s. Maybe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

None of them. Now, if you and I at our age, now, 28, were in that room. Yeah. Like, we would probably be like, go ahead and try. Go ahead and try to sue me for this. Or go ahead and, like, you're not gonna give. You're not gonna sue me for 5 million. No court's gonna even, like, hear that case. That's ridiculous. That's absurd. And yet we know this because of our lived experiences. To think that a literal. I mean, she's an adult, sure, but a kid is listening to this, that would be terrifying.

[A]

Terrifying. Also, listen, I won't go into detail another episode, but I did sign a legal document when I was 27 years old. And I was given just a lawyer on the phone being like, this is probably a good idea. And I was like, well, gotta listen to authority. And they were like, it's for your safety. Sign it. Don't understand it. You can't comprehend it. Like, I was 20 fucking 7, which is crazy. Cause I'm 23 now. But looking back on that, it is so painful to even see bad decisions I made as a full adult. And she's in college.

[B]

We're always being taken advantage of. I was just taken advantage of by a health insurance company. So, like, we're all like, at any age, you are suspect to being taken advantage of because these companies and these people know that this is not your world. And it probably causes you a lot of anxiety to do these things or XYZ or you probably have ambitions, so you want to do a thing and you think, well, I'll just suffer through it if it's going to get me to this place that I need to be or if I need to do this thing. And they really prey on that.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Especially it's like, listen, have I saved a meme that's like, know your worth. Sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But when you show up for a job and they're like, if you don't sign this, there's 5,000 brunettes behind you.

[B]

You're like, I guess I got to.

[A]

I guess My worth is $1. And I will be there tomorrow at 6am yes.

[B]

And now, what's so fascinating about. I kept thinking this while reading, reading Sarah's book is that, you know, when she left the show, social media wasn't really a thing. It wasn't a thing that nowadays, these reality TV stars, I'm friends with many of them. I talk with many of them, from Drag Race to Survivor to my boyfriend was on Project Runway. Like, all these shows. Like, nowadays, these people leave these shows and they try to maintain that celebrity by continuing it on social media in some capacity, try to profit off of it for years. And now there are even shows created to profit off of the desperation of old reality stars called Traders, that then these people, like.

[A]

Wait, what are you gonna say? Traders?

[B]

Yeah, these people, everyone on Traders does not need to exist in reality, in our worlds at all. That is all desperate. And I. And I call, I talk to them, and I probably now will never, ever speak with another trader again. But they all are desperate fame whores looking to maintain a relevancy, and that is all fueled by social media.

[A]

Well, and also, I would say it's like fame whore in the way of, like, what. What else are like when you put your job application down and you're like, my work experience is three reality shows in the mid-2000s. Like, they. Who. That they didn't get paid for. They were abused for all these things. Yeah. Make your buck on social Love island stars. It's not like they make money on Love Islands. They make money getting off Love island and selling cheeses if they're lucky.

[B]

So, all right, it blows the thing. It just blows me away that, like, you know, we're Casting regular people on Survivor who. Because they have interesting stories or whatever it is. I don't need them to be social media stars after that. I don't need that. Go back and be the mom. Go back and be the executive.

[A]

I would say with Survivor, I think that's true. Like, have you seen a Survivor social media star emerge in the past?

[B]

Unless they're on Traitors. Like, no.

[A]

You know, like, I would say that's not so much a pipeline the way maybe Love is Blind is. Yeah.

[B]

Or even Drag Race or any of those shows where there's an entertaining element to it. You are an entertainer, so of course that makes sense that you would go off and do those things.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Which is why I still love Survivor.

[B]

I know. Me too. We should talk about that someday. Yes.

[A]

Oh, my God, I can't wait for the new seasons. Okay, so Tyra shows up on the cruise ship. Right? So they've been operating. They haven't seen Tyra, but Tyra is an icon to all of them and especially to Sarah. She's like, here we are, ladies. Tyra said the top 20 baddest chicks in the bunch. But of course, there can only be 13. 13 girls who will become Cinderella stories. They'll go from everyday girls in their hometowns to girls that everyone in America will know their names. Okay, so then she starts naming names, and Mila goes first, and she strides forward and she hugs Tyra and she cries and she writes this. Tyra looked at someone off camera and shook her head. No more hugs. They yelled. And then when she called my name, I started like a horse and yelled, nuh. As I carefully walked across the platform toward Tyra, I looked in her eyes and thought, God, I can't wait to go to sleep. And so now we get into the Tyra stuff, which is.

[B]

What is it about Tyra that makes her the Katy Perry of reality television? Like, she's so unfortunate. She's so. She's massive. She's massively famous, like, internationally known, like, legitimately. And she did some great things. But also, why is she so cringe?

[A]

That is such an apt comparison, too. Because Katie really had a moment where the love was genuine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, the whipped cream titties was like, Katie.

[B]

Huh? She was ready to roar.

[A]

Yeah. And like, I kissed a girl. No one really realized that was bad

[B]

or problematic in any capacity. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

And. But that's. That's Tyra. Tyra's out there being like, I am making a difference. And for years, for like a handful of years, people didn't realize, like, actually, I think you're.

[B]

You're forcing something really bad. Young white women to wear black face.

[A]

Okay, So I found that out when I was Instagramming this book on the glamorous trash podcast. Instagram. Did you know she forced models to do blackface in two different episodes years apart?

[B]

Yep. Yep.

[A]

Okay. So this was news to me. And I. So I told. I told my husband this. I was like, did you know she had models to be blackface? And he was like, husband, I love.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Oh, my God, let us. Let's both marry him and also marry your boyfriend. Okay? So I was like, hey, did you know this? And he was like, let me see the photos. Like, there's no way. And I showed him the photos, and he audibly yelped.

[B]

He was like, wait. There was one season. I forget which one now. The names, all of it. But there was one season where a girl lost a family member or a good friend to a drug addiction. And then the photo shoot that day, she had to pretend that she was dying of a drug overdose. No, that was the aesthetic for the photo shoot. And she had just lost her friend to a drug overdose.

[A]

I mean, it wasn't in the book, but when I'm. Maybe it was. I'm rewatching the episode, and there was a girl who works as a bikini wax artist, and Tyra is interviewing her to be a model. Tyra gets up on all fours on the folding table that the judges sit behind in a dress, and the girl comes and mimes giving Tyra a bikini wax, including the, like, spread your ass cheeks part. And there's something so potent like that. Tyra was like the crazy, kooky girl. But then you're like, wait. And then she's like, oop, she got my vajayjay.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Okay, this feels like a good time to take a quick break. Things have been wild schedule wise over here, and I've been starting my day by rolling out of bed. And then the one thing I do before I leave the house is I slick them brows back. And then I use Thrive's brilliant eye brightener. I just kind of roll it all around my eyes. It's an eyeshadow, but it's a highlighter, and it's really been helping my daily look. I also love Thrive's mascara because it does not flake. It has a different quality to the texture of it than other mascaras. You'll notice it the moment you put it on. It stays on all day, and it is very lengthening. So I love it. I also love this company because with every purchase they donate to causes that really make a difference and domestic violence is one of them. With over 150 million in product and cash donations to 600 million plus giving partners, your purchase directly fuels real impact and that is beauty with purpose. So I love the causes that they support. So I love supporting Thrive. Amplify your spring look with Thrive cosmetics. Go to thrivecosmetics.com glamorous for an exclusive offer of 20 off your first order. That's Thrive Cosmetics. C-A U S E M E T-I C S.com glamorous okay, let's dive back into the episode.

[B]

Tyra. I'm dying to meet her someday just so that I can experience a little bit of whatever the chaos that you know, even when. Cause she lost one of her homes during the wildfires here in California. But here's the thing. She lives primarily in Australia from what I understand. Like she's like mainly there I think maybe because of family or she shoots something there. I don't know what it is.

[A]

Is.

[B]

And so when she was on television, it was this weird dance of like I'm gonna talk about how I'm relevant in this situation but yet experienced very little loss because I don't live there. It was.

[A]

And I have multiple.

[B]

And I have multiple homes. And it was this weird dance and I was just like, I want to be as, like I listen as a gay homosexual who loves complicated people. I love a delusional middle aged woman. I love them. That's it. That said Tyra, she's on another level. She couldn't even be a housewife.

[A]

Whoa. Now that's. You're right. That is a statement and I will co sign it. And we're gonna get into some really nuanced incredible Tyra thought at the end of this book that Sarah wrote. But I'm gonna co sign that sentiment because. Do you remember when she was a host of Dancing with the Stars for one season?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And she could not do it. And it was, it was incredible because she was reading off a teleprompter. Yeah, but, but, but her, her eyes were like bouncing to the moon and back like it's like Dancing with the Stars couldn't contain her desires.

[B]

And what, what that proved that season of Dancing with the Stars proved is that she is so incredibly scripted that even the kooky things are all workshopped in advance. Everything is so, I mean down to, I think back to her. If you've ever, if you ever want to see the most uncomfortable interview of your life, google Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell on the Tyra Banks Show. The talk show. Because Tyra Banks would talk for years about their beef and how she thought Naomi hated her. And Naomi Campbell comes on, and it's so. It makes you love Naomi Campbell, but it also makes you be like, oh, Tyra.

[A]

What does Naomi say?

[B]

Naomi. Naomi's just sort of like, I didn't know you were upset. I don't know why I remember this

[A]

because I was so new and young. You said, I have to ask you something. Do they try to make you look like me? Right. And I said, I don't know about so much now, but in la, yeah, they really did. With the little short black wibs.

[B]

You told me that. Yes.

[A]

And Naomi, you got up, pushed me away and said, yeah, I thought so. And you turned.

[B]

I did.

[A]

You went from the sweetest woman that was giving me vitamins to someone that terrified me on that trip. Oh, my God. And understandable. I can understand. I was told on that trip that I was sent home because you don't want me there anymore. So I didn't finish that. No, that's not true. That's what I was told.

[B]

I don't have the power.

[A]

Then to winter.

[B]

Brutal.

[A]

Okay, we're gonna. We're gonna put a pin in it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We're gonna come back to it later. First, Sarah gets into the house, and I need to read some of the house, please. Rules.

[B]

I was obsessed with the house rules.

[A]

The house rules are incredible. Okay. Every morning, before we did anything else, we were to get miked. It absolutely had to be the first thing we did before coffee, before a shower, and certainly before speaking to anyone. If we woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to walk around, we didn't have to get miked, but if anyone else woke up, we did. And even if we didn't talk to each other, if there were two of us awake, we had to be miked. We were never to look directly into the camera except for the confessional or talk to the camera operators. We shouldn't acknowledge them at all, even if they came rushing up to us, which they would do a lot. This was my favorite. We had to spend five minutes a day in the confessional. We didn't have to say anything, and we could go in with other people, but we all had to have been in the room for five minutes every day before any of us could go to bed. She would sometimes go into the confessional with a book and just read for Five minutes. And then the last rule was the girls should consider showering together, you know, for the environment, the theme of the season.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And in the shower and in the toilets, they couldn't film, but they could film them anywhere else in the bathroom if there was one more person in the bathroom.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, you know, here's the thing. I. And I don't want to, like, completely rag on the show, because reading Sarah's book, one of the things that does stand out to me again, as I said, like, having known all these people on these other franchises, these other reality shows, there are many truths that still happen to this day on shows like Survivor that Sarah writes about. Like this. This is oftentimes things like the bathroom thing, that is sometimes standard practice. There are very detailed rules about how those things are filmed. But, like, it has. And of course, we've become more understanding about the psychological needs of contestants, and sort of there is a more of an awareness about that. That there was not when Sarah was on television.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But like, a lot of these rules that the house rules and stuff still stand today, which is.

[A]

So it's like, it's got gotten minuscule better, which is so tough because when you're reading this, Sarah is citing quotes from books like Cultish to explain how cults begin and how they were all conditioned very quickly.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Then there was my favorite cameo crossover ever. Raja, the future winner of season three of RuPaul's Drag Race, was the head makeup artist, and they introduced themselves and got to work on my face. Raja was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. Tall and lean with gleaming skin and long, dark, shining hair. I asked them about themselves and was so excited to learn they were a drag queen. So Raja does all the makeup for America's Next Next Top Model for years and years and years and years, then finally gets to go on RuPaul's Drag Race and win.

[B]

Yeah. And I will say Raja, while she was on America's Next Just a little drag history while she was on America's Next Top Model and years before she was on Drag Race, she had already been a pretty iconic local Los Angeles girl. Like, she. She had been doing drag for a minute, and it wasn't like she just sort of, like, went on to do Drag Race. No. She had been an institution in Los Angeles with Delta work and. And a few other queens in la. So, like, she was well respected both in makeup circles, fashion circles, but drag circles for a long time.

[A]

Because I remember that season, they were like, oh, my God. Mother is here and like, how can we compete against Raja? But it's also incredible just knowing that that was the America's Next Top Model head of makeup department.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is like, unbelievable.

[B]

It's so. And I love that she spoke kindly of. Of Raja, too, because Raja is just like. Is just. Is great. Is just.

[A]

Sweetheart.

[B]

Truly, truly.

[A]

I loved that crossover. Well, they get into the house and Sarah. I love Sarah. So production is like, we're gonna give you body issues as a theme. Like, your storyline is like feeling bad about your body. Yeah. Which is. It's so wild because, like, their whole thing, they were trying to.

[C]

I think.

[A]

I think she later figures out they were trying to get her to be a plus size advocate. And I only found this out because I interviewed her. So listen to that. But they're trying to get her to give a body positivity speech.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But what she said was like, this is 2007. I didn't know the words they wanted me to say. Like, we hadn't started that movement. I'd only been taught to hate myself.

[B]

Also, like, I mean, I'm sorry, when I do my stand up or whenever I do drag or my performances or whatever, I'll make jokes about my body a lot of times. You know what I mean? Because I can own my own jokes. And people sometimes will be like, oh, don't you know, they want to put the plus size language on me. And I'm just like, I can call myself fat and make fun of myself and do all the things I want to myself, and you can either accept it or not, but, like, don't put this. I'm not an activist for anybody. I will talk about my fat ass whenever I want, however I want, and I don't need to be the leader of your parade. I'm sorry.

[A]

Listen, that's how I feel about the words bitch, slut, whore, and cunt.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'll use them as I please. Yes. And I also think something got twisted in culture in the past last decade where while intending to reshape culture and make it really positive and have positive intentions, which. Absolutely. We sort of put all this meaning onto words that sometimes no longer existed, you know, in the sense of like, we can reclaim the word if you want and if you don't, you should not. Same with what you're saying with body. Like, what. What empowers you. Well, the really cool thing about Sarah is that she will not give them the storyline they want of empowerment because

[B]

she's like, I don't know how made me love Her.

[A]

Me too. But she also won't give them her inner monologue of how insecure she does feel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So almost every time they try and be like, did you feel so much bigger up there? Like, were you insecure? Because, like, your body is huge and theirs is not, like, horrible questions.

[B]

Like, the makeover bit after the makeover, like, what they did to her and her body. Like, the questions that came over. I forget exactly what it was, but. But they cut her hair short, if I remember correctly. And the producers would always ask her questions as, does it make you look more masculine? Do you feel like it'll make. It'll show off your curves more? Does that make you insecure? Whatever the questions were. And it's just sort of. And she's just sort of like, no, I've always wanted short hair. I think I look cute with short. Like, literally, she's just, like, happy about

[A]

her hair, and she's genuinely happy. And they're like, they're upset. You can tell they tried to give her that haircut to, like, ruin her life or something.

[B]

And then when she's. They bring up the body image thing, she's like. They're like, oh, does that make you feel like you look fat or whatever? And she was like, well, it didn't before and it does now. Like, they're just, like, getting into her head about it, which is partly their job. At the same time, you don't need to do it like that.

[A]

This is America's Next Top Model. She's in her head. Like, everyone's in their head. Like, it's a looks based show. And yet. So she would start, for some reason, she knows a crazy amount of ocean Marina life facts. And so whenever the questions got too intense, she would start telling them, like, facts about sharks, facts about, like, octopus. And, like, they would be like, what? And she would just keep going, which is genius for 20 years old. Okay, quick little Tyra tangent. Even though we're gonna come to a big thing at the end, you need

[B]

a sound effect for the Tyra tangent.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

I know. Producer Christina's on it.

[B]

I was rooting for you.

[A]

We were all rooting for you. Okay. As always, Tyra was perfectly made up and had her on camera, face on, composed, and hiding any inkling of how she was really feeling. I'd known performers who could turn it on like her, but I'd never met someone who. Who never seemed to turn it off. I couldn't see any chinks in her armor no matter how long I looked.

[B]

Here's the thing. And I got that. I remember she picked up. But they said similar things about that throughout the book. I actually respect someone who is just on RuPaul's like that. You know, Jeff Probst is kind of like that in a lot of situations that I've experienced, but also from stories I've heard, like, I kind of respect that from someone who is getting paid that much to be the face of a show that. That is. Is that big. It's sort of like you want to be on all the time because, you know, every moment is a possible moment for the show. You know what I mean?

[A]

That's a great point. And those were two not only great examples of what you're saying, but two of our best reality TV show hosts.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Which is saying something because something. Not all hosts are good. And so, yeah, it's that hyper performative thing.

[B]

And.

[A]

And I've also heard about Rue that, like, when they're off, they're off. Like, they'll never see you. Because I imagine Rue has to, like, turn so off that, like, no one can come near them.

[B]

Well, there's the. The video of, I think, DragCon one year where Ru didn't know Jinx Monsoon's name, and Jinx was standing right next to her. And it's sort of like, this is a person who's won your show twice, who is, like, one of the most famous drag queens that has ever come from RuPaul's Drag Race. And you don't know her name, which.

[A]

But I gotta tell you, Ru has probably met 400,000 queens in their life. I can see me doing that with, like, my best friend in the wrong place.

[B]

Oh, my God. I was literally just in drag of the show, not wrong. And I saw a good friend of mine. I didn't recognize them at all because they, like, were wearing a hat or something. So maybe I've heard Brad Pitt has face blindness. I think I might have it, too.

[A]

Listen, we could all be suffering.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So a couple of stories. I mean, they're throughout the book. The book is great. It really begins with auditioning, and it ends with getting off the show. Like, it is a scene by scene. But overall, Nigel is always brought up to her as, like, he's so hot. Don't you want to fuck Nigel? Don't you have a crush on Nigel to the point where she's like, am I supposed to fuck Nigel? She was like, and his family would always be there, and, like, they were just always pushed. Like, everyone's in love with Nigel. And the rumor was that he slept with a model every season. I mean, even though she never saw whatever of it, it.

[B]

I will say Nigel could hit it.

[A]

Okay, so we should have been asking you those questions. Don't you have a crush on Nigel?

[B]

I mean, Nigel. I'm even. Have you seen some of his recent posts? No. God.

[A]

I mean, what's he doing?

[B]

He's working out. He's like, doing like. Yeah, he's like, working out and stuff.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Like, I mean, he's hot for a dude. Like, I always wanted him to be gay, but he's not. He's not gay at all. And yet that he does have the sensibility that he'd let you stare in the locker room. You know what I mean? He would, like, it's like, that's his community service.

[A]

Like, this is art. My body's art. I understand.

[B]

This is for you, homosexual.

[A]

That is what she said. It was like on America's Next Top Model and. But I guess Sarah didn't share your taste. So she was always like, I guess he's fine. And they were like, are you crazy?

[B]

I want to know Sarah's type.

[A]

I know now someone who I. I didn't see this coming. Maybe it's because I'm not plugged in. But Mr. J, which very different from Ms. J. Everyone. Mr. J is like the platinum blonde guy. Fucking hated working there, hated all the models, hated life, and was rude and horrible to everyone. What did you think of the Mr. J parts?

[B]

Well, because I. I shared the sentiment. I remember seeing Mr. J all over my neighborhood in New York when I was. I was working in Chelsea for years, and I would always see him, and he was always just such, like a sour. Like he just has that energy of just being a little bitch. And he and Sarah basically confirmed that Mr. J is basically a little bitch.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. That he was, like, petty and an asshole and rude and, like, didn't want to be filming. And I'm so sorry. But. But Mr. J, like, did you have something else to do in this?

[B]

What were you doing? You were doing, like, the third hour of the Today show.

[A]

Yeah, like, like, get it together. So whatever. So I talked to her a little bit about Mr. J. But then this is actually one of the most beautiful parts of the book. Sarah wrote this. So they're all in the house, but they can remember. They can only talk if there's a camera there. This is 2007.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

In rare moments of clarity, I found myself wondering if maybe after everything, I was a lesbian. But I Had to admit I was also attracted to men. I was still in deep denial about there being a third option. Even when I kissed a waitress outside the diner she worked at. Even when I went home with her and found myself present for the very first time, which meant being open and vulnerable in a way I never had before. Afterward, I snapped shut like a spring loaded clamshell. Hard, angry and cruel. And then she goes into the house and she's sitting in a group, and she said, suddenly, without any warning to her or honestly myself, I found myself saying, did you hear that? Lisa is bi. Oh, said Jenna, so am I. My mouth was dry and my mind was spinning as I did my best not to show it. You are like you. You are like. Like you have. I was sputtering, Like, I have been with men and I have been with women. Yes, she said, patient but a little confused by my reaction. When you were with women, was it. Was it for real or for sex? She looked at me, unsure how to answer. For real. I mean, we had sex, but also like we dated. Huh? I said. I am too, but I never dated a woman. Just been, you know, with them, like, for sex. I wanted to, though. I felt like a kid who'd just gotten away with something. Suddenly it all seemed so obvious. I was bisexual. I looked nervously at the man holding a camera about 6ft away. Had I just come out of the closet on national fucking television?

[B]

Wild. Wild.

[A]

I mean, wilder is that multiple women on the show were discussing being bi, queer or lesbian and none of it. It was aired.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they wanted to hide it. They. Yes, exactly. Of course they did. I mean, I will say, you know, if this came out in 2007, Newsweek had invented bisexuality only in 1995 when that cover came out where they talked about bisexuality. So, like, you know.

[A]

Wait, wait, same way. You need to say more on that.

[B]

Yeah. There's a NewsWeek cover from 1995 that always. Every single year. It actually just recently had the anniversary every single year. On July 17, bisexuals across the world celebrate the invention of bisexuality. Because there was a cover of Newsweek that said not gay, not straight, that it's something in between or whatever it is. And it was like bisexuality. It was really big on the COVID Google it. But I will say, I do love when people can realize their sexuality. I came out of the vagina with the purse in hand. So, like, I have never comes first, comes first, purse first, purse first. So I have never had the. Had to have the moment where I was like, am I Gay. Because I was always trying to see the dick. So I. Yeah, I don't. I really respect this moment for her.

[A]

Well, the other person we have to discuss from this book is, honestly, it shocked me. The biggest bitch of them all.

[B]

The.

[A]

The judge who was the worst to her. Twiggy.

[B]

Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. Actually, it didn't.

[A]

Okay. Because someone pointed out to me something very smart, which is that Janice Dickinson gets so much heat for what she was like as a judge.

[B]

She's cool.

[A]

Yeah. But Twiggy is never talked about as, like, remember when she was a raging, mean bitch to all these young women?

[B]

She probably felt like she was the celebrity on America's Next Top Model of the judges. She probably felt like she was the RuPaul of the panel or whatever it was. You know what I mean? I wasn't surprised then by that because she seems like she has an inflated head.

[A]

Yeah, you're right. And I know reality TV is, like, for show behanious, blah, blah. But, like, she would say things to Sarah's face of like. Like, you look really beautiful in that photograph, which is shocking. Cause in front of me, you're quite

[B]

plain and yucky, which is just like, girl, I'm here. I'm not. There's no photo shoot. There's no lights around me. I'm not in the outfit. I'm here to be. We're here to talk about this photo. Not about what I'm wearing right now,

[A]

but also inside thought, why do you got.

[B]

Why you gotta tell her you're here

[A]

to judge the modeling?

[B]

Boring.

[A]

Okay, so there's a contestant named Heather who was on the autism spectrum. And that is a huge storyline that she wants to be a model, but she's on the spectrum, which, again, going back to 2007, like, beautiful. Like, bringing this to screen. Like, there's moments where Tyra's, like, really doing it. Right. But then for makeover day, they're like, we know. Let's get Heather, who is on the spectrum, to melt down by showing her a CGI image of the makeover we're gonna give her where she's wearing a mohawk. And then she'll have a mental breakdown, which we would like to see on screen. And that'll be fun for the show. And they reveal, like, you're getting a mohawk. And Heather goes, great, I love it. And then Tyra's like, what? She's like, okay, great. And she's like, what? And then literally, they have to cut all of the footage out, and they're like, no, just kidding. You're keeping your hair.

[B]

It is so have you. Did you watch. This is a tangent, but it's important. Did you watch the last season of. Of Survivor?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

With the girl who was autistic. And that storyline and the way they handled it, it. That is how you should handle people who are differently abled in different kinds of ways, who have different life experiences that maybe don't align with how other people are abled. And as someone who comes from a family, as someone who I. I don't have. Well, no, I do have someone in my family who's autistic, but I have a brother with cerebral palsy. So I'm very aware of sort of the handicaps that we exist in the world and I just love the way they handled that. I loved it.

[A]

Yeah. The last season of Survivor was incredible for many reasons, but that storyline was so beautiful and it was just so authentic.

[B]

Yeah. And the person who had a stutter too, that was also very real.

[A]

And so, listen, I get that we're talking about seasons that were more recent than 2007, but it does seem pretty egregious to be like, we're gonna try and punk the girl on the spectrum on purpose. They didn't punk anyone else.

[B]

It's just. Yeah, well, yeah, it's. It's horrible, horrible, horrible.

[A]

Okay, so they bring on. Or Tyra brings on a body image expert who's like, why don't you guys love yourselves? Meanwhile, they're getting $37 a day per diem sometimes and they have to buy their own food.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Sarah ends up in this really tough eating disordered daily routine financially, financially. She's like, I can afford some beans and some lettuce or like whatever she's eating. They bring on this body image expert and Sarah's like, what the is going on? She later finds out it was a dermatologist. Just a lady who was a dermatologist who wanted you to love your curves,

[B]

which is just so almost la. I have a doctor here in LA who is a bit of a wack and I love him because he'll prescribe anything. Said it. But hey, but like, it is such an LA experience that a show, a production company would hire a doctor to talk with someone about body image. And it's someone who quite literally gives Botox for a living. Like, like, like.

[A]

And they're like, you don't need training to love yourself, just do it.

[B]

Yeah. It's like there's no skill behind this absurd. It's, you know, Whenever Sarah brought up the food things in the book, and it happens quite often throughout the book, I kept thinking that sometimes the food was being used as a ways to like get her. They, I want to catch her eating on camera. Or they want to like, they want to see her hungry because everyone loves a fat, hungry person. Person. And like I kept thinking that there was things that they were doing in order to get her to be that fat person and she was not fat, but that fat person. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God.

[B]

You're absolutely gave me anxiety because I mean, I, as a fat person sometimes I'm very embarrassed. I'll never eat and walk half sometimes or I'll never. Like there are things that I won't do because I am self conscious of not so much, much how I view myself eating, but how others view me eating. And so, yeah, it's like there's a mind that I have in that experience. My boyfriend and I go to Disneyland a lot and you would think there it's just sort of like, let the rolls out, need the churro. But there is this mentality of like, I don't want this straight dad to see me eating a churro and be like, look at that fat. Look at that fat walking around happy as a clam eating that churro. Like, I don't want, I don't, I don't, I don't. I think he's judging me and I just want to see his dick.

[A]

And. I just snorted. Yes. No, you're so right. And it's. There's so much I will here. I will tell you. So I've talked about disordered eating on this podcast a lot because I live through it. But I've recently, actually so probably like five distinct times in my life. Like, I can go back to every restaurant I was at that where I was across from someone lovely, someone I love, who I wanted to have dinner with, who said to me, wow, I love you because you're really not afraid to eat.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

And in those. And they mean it as a comp, I think, I don't know. I think they're good hearted about it.

[B]

They're good hearted about it.

[A]

But yeah, I really don't believe it was a jab. I think it was an appreciation of I can't believe you're eating the way maybe I do at home in bed, in the dark or something like, I can't believe you're doing it in public or maybe I'm a disgusting eater and this is something for Me to face. I. Not sure. But, like, every time, it made me feel so bad, you know, it's like, well, I wasn't feeling bad.

[B]

You get in your head about it. I can pinpoint my eating shame. So sort of to when I remember a very distinct moment when I was a kid and I got a second bowl of cereal, and my brother said to me, you sure you need that other bowl of cereal? And from that moment, I was so embarrassed. And that, to me is like the. When. When it started, when the shame started was that moment when I was, like, five. Yeah.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[A]

My. That. My. My dad said that exact sentence to me. But then guess what? He turned out not to be my dad. So we're fine.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So the next thing that happened.

[B]

You're a little Mariska Heart de Gay. Look at you.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

The amount of people who sent me that documentary.

[B]

She stole your story. Where's your Oscar?

[A]

Why don't you go see this and cry? And I did.

[B]

I love her. She followed me and I DM'd her, and I. I was just like, I love you so much.

[A]

I love that so much. Yeah, that's a good ass documentary we did. We did a little mini episode on it. Okay, so Ebony then begs to go home. She's like, please send me home. Even though she wasn't the model, they were going to be eliminated. She's like, I just want to see my family. I can't do this. I need to talk to my friends. Maybe you fucked up my hair. She didn't say that. But it's just like, I just want to go home. I don't want to do this anymore.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Tyra is like, like, you whore. Like, she's crying. She's like, there's nothing I hate more in this world than a quitter shame.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And she's like, ebony, get the hell out of here. And so they send Ebony away, and every. And they have this secret signal where that. That means this. And it's like this little hand movement, and Ebony leaves and they all do this, but they're like, at least Ebony got free. Yeah, we'll come back to that a little bit later.

[B]

I kind of like that they had, like. It was almost like a Normara, you know, union, but yet it was this hand signal, like.

[A]

Yeah, that was a tiny little hand signal that the cameras couldn't catch.

[B]

They were. They were unionized by hand signals, really.

[A]

And also they were. That's the only way they were allowed to speak to each other. The camera was in the room yeah. So then they go and do a music video shoot for. Oh, my God. Do you remember the band? Because it's left my brain. It's a band.

[B]

I don't remember the band. I don't. I'm not. I'm. Every friend makes fun of me because as soon as music enters, I don't. No idea what's going on. Same.

[A]

I'm always.

[B]

I'm like, I'm not a music person. You tell me the stand up that. Was there a TV episode that happened. I got you music.

[A]

I'm lost my love language. Is someone else sending me a playlist? Because I can't make my. I can't build my own salad and I can't make my own playlist.

[B]

My boyfriend was just like, you need to get into this K pop band. I was like, I'm only getting into it if you play. Make me a playlist. I'm done. I won't. I'm not going to search for it myself.

[A]

Okay, I will. I will do a pickup and come back in and tell you the band. Who is Enrique Iglesias. Yeah. I don't know why I called it a band. Don't know why I blacked it out, but I did. And it was definitely a music video for Enrique Iglesias. Okay. So they do a music video shoot for like 24 hours because they're like, we're gonna shoot all these models, you know, for the show. But also, if you guys suck, we have a second set of ladies. And then the productions haven't. They don't have enough costumes, they don't have enough makeup. Like, it's just a nightmare. And one of the models passes out and turns blue and can't breathe.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Sarah finds her courage because they, you know, they've been put into this cult and goes up to a producer and is like, calling an ambulance. Like, get her to the hospital. Like, her skin is blue.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the producer is like, listen up, little girl. Like, we are not calling the doctor. Like, put an apple in her mouth. She's gonna be fine. And Sarah's like, she's dying. Like, she could die. And they're like, we don't care. And no, she won't get over it. And then that is the challenge. Sarah goes home on.

[B]

Yeah. No, no surprise. No surprise there.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And she's just like. She's in such a fog and a trance that, like, she'd been telling herself, like, I'm gonna make it to the end. But then also was sort of like, am I?

[B]

Well, they Hype you up to that, too. They hype you up to feel like that as well.

[A]

Yeah. And so they're like, okay, bye. And she's like, okay, what now? They take her to her room, and they're like, here's a trash bag.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Put everything in it. Because she had been gathering free shit at their challenges that she wanted to take home.

[B]

That made me love Sarah so much. So much. Because that is so me.

[A]

That is so me. I once. I once opened up a suitcase to go back to school, and I had seven different things of toothpaste. Some use, some not. I had been kleptoing toothpaste, thinking to myself, just save $2.

[B]

Can I tell you $2? Can I share a secret? Please share a secret right now. I was at the Freakier Friday junket doing interviews for my podcast, and I am friendly with Jamie Lee Curtis, and I may have gone into to the back room and taken multiple versions of these.

[A]

Okay. Allen has just held up a Freaky Friday. Very nice tumbler.

[B]

Stanley cup. Yeah, Stanley Cup. And I. I took many.

[A]

So Sarah is just, like, in a trance, and with a pa they're like, put all this stuff in a trash bag. She's like, I got some free makeup. I'm putting it in the trash bag. And they take her to a hotel. Well, go ahead, please.

[B]

I don't know if this happens before or after the hotel, but there is a moment where they take her to the grocery store.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

You remember this? That's right. And I. I've never. I've never felt this so hard. She gets to the grocery store. The. The handler gives her a grocery cart and told me to get some food. And she asks how much? And the guy goes. Or the person goes, enough for a week, let's say. And she's like. Let's say. As if. Like, she doesn't know what's gonna happen a week from now. Like, it's sort of like, I have enough trouble at Costco figuring out. Out navigating my way through that rotisserie chicken line. Like, I don't know what I would do if someone just said, yeah, get a little something. I don't know what I would do.

[A]

Also, you don't have a kitchen.

[B]

No.

[A]

You. Well, also, she doesn't even know. She doesn't have a kitchen. She doesn't know where she's being taken. Yeah. And they take her to the grocery store, and they're like, we don't know how. Where you're going or how long it'll be or what you'll have. And they take her to Panda Express, and she's like, thank you, God.

[B]

And Crab Rangoon.

[A]

Crab Rangoon. And then. Oh, yeah. They said, we'll get you whatever you want to eat. And she said, I couldn't think of any restaurants. McDonald's. I asked, and they were like, how about Panda Express? And so she asked, is there a microwave where I'm going? I asked the handler. Yes. The handler said, I got microwave popcorn and nacho ingredients. And, you know, listen, she's 20, and

[B]

so I would never. I just kept thinking, heartburn.

[A]

Yeah, it's tough. So she's eliminated, and she has a breakdown, and she's like, I don't even know know why I was having a breakdown. Like, I think it's because I didn't sleep. But it looks like I'm, like, devastated to leave the show. So much so that they call her a hotel room when she gets in the hotel, and they're like, hey, we have Frank for you. And she's like, who the fuck is Frank? And they're like, the sound guy we thought you had a crush on. And she was like, oh. And Frank's like, hey, Sarah, it'll be all right. You're just gonna live in a hotel for a while. And she's like, okay.

[B]

Frank fucking sent her a cameo. Literally. That's what they did for her. They got her a production cameo.

[A]

As if she cared. She goes into this hotel room, and she wrote, I collapsed on the bed and slept for 16 hours.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When I woke up the first morning, I realized that the handler had taken the room key.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was a very bougie prisoner, and frankly, I didn't care. I would happily stay in there. And one day the handler says, you might have to get a roommate. And she wrote. I choked back the primal scream in my chest and said, I cannot have a roommate.

[C]

I can't.

[A]

I can't. I can't.

[B]

That's my girl. Girl. Literally. Sarah, in this moment is everything I would be. I am the friend in the friend group that when I'm done with something, when. When I won't do something, you know I'm done, I will walk away. I will say no to things.

[A]

Good for you. You're the boundaries for me.

[B]

I am a very much a boundaries person. I. When I am done or don't want something, I just say, nope, not for me, and walk away.

[A]

Well, so Sarah, unfortunately, is not getting any food.

[B]

No.

[A]

And she doesn't have the key to her own hotel room. She can't leave. She can't use the phone, but she's just so exhausted and happy to be off the show that she's just living it up for weeks. And then she wrote this. I'm not the only one who ran out of food. When Lisa d' Amato was kept in a hotel after her elimination on Cycle five, her handler quote was sneaking food for me, like, granola bars. Which is the reason why in the next episode after I got eliminated, where Bri thought someone stole her granola bars, it was because a PA went in and stole her granola bars, thinking it was productions, but it was hers and brought it to my hotel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Sarah then learns that other contestants who've been voted off are also at the hotel. But, like, after weeks, like, she sees someone across a balcony.

[B]

How Twilight Zone is that?

[A]

How fucked up. They're still not letting them talk to anyone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then she said, because I guess the paparazzi was like, who's won America's Next Top Model? They would bring decoys to every every single event and bring girls who'd been already cast off the show. They would bring them to set of, like, final challenges so that the press wouldn't find out. And they got to choose who went to China in this round.

[B]

I have a question. How much do you think that note that they had producers had is all just from Tyra's delusional brain? I don't believe that there are actually paparazzi hunting down, finding out who the Next Top Model is going to be. I don't think there was ever one. There maybe was one photo entire freaked out, and that's why that rule became a thing.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to go back to 2007. Cause again, I was just trying to suck dicks that didn't want me to. And that took a lot of time and energy. But, I mean, I remember, wasn't it like, Nick Viall on the plane home from the Bachelor was talking to someone, and then someone spoiled the season, and it was huge news. And I mean, that was like seven years ago. So maybe.

[B]

I mean, same thing happened with Drag Race when ra' Jah was crowned. Like, it had gotten leaked or whatever because they shot it there. So, like, people definitely. There definitely was that culture. I get that. But to go to this length and to inflate the value of that photo of this random girl that no one knows about, like, no.

[A]

And I don't think the paparazzi on season nine of America's Next Top Model

[B]

were flying season nine to see who was.

[A]

Who was getting out of the production van.

[B]

No.

[A]

For the final challenge, however, they would drag contestants around. And this, I mean, I absolutely screamed when I got to this part. I'm going to read it out loud. They were literally locked out of their hotel room with a production assistant staff member, what have you, looking after them. But they weren't even allowed to have the key to their room. They had to stay in their room. It's almost like they were prisoners. One of the decoys was Ebony. After she asked to leave the show because she missed her family, they kept her locked in hotel room rooms for almost two months. We brought Ebony. She wanted to leave the competition. And then we were like, sorry, no, you can't go home. Which was torture for her because they brought her to China.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, and you. And you likely they brought her to China because someone was mad of what she did. Like, I guarantee you.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think they were like, make her pay. Like, show her what happens when you're a quitter. Which is psychological torture.

[B]

Insane. I wonder, from your question with. With this, does Sarah worry about getting a lawsuit?

[A]

That is the first question I asked her.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

On our bonus excluse. So tune in if you want to hear it.

[B]

But I'm tell you, tell me.

[A]

Okay. So she gets off the show. She brings her trash bag of free makeup swag to all her friends back home. She has no money. She has to go work on the blueberry farm. She doesn't even have gas money. She's living off of, like, change from her couch. She's so poor, she slowly realizes that Celicia has won the season. And then she tries to become a model herself. And she goes to get an agent. And the agent is like, okay, first things first. You need to lose about 30 pounds, he told me. I stared at his round frame. Oh, no, sorry. I know. I want to be a plus size model. I said.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

He said, confused. I mean, have you thought about just losing £30?

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

And then she said, I met with agent after agent, and they all said the sum version of the same thing. Come back when your hair is longer. Including Wilhelmina. None of them said I was too thin. None of them seemed to care about Top Model either, except as an explanation for why my hair was too short. One agent put it this way, quote, we want fat, happy girls with fat, happy teeth and hair. I thought back to all of the women in my mom's Newport News catalogs. And this is what kills Me. Because Tyra would deal with, like, models have to. Blah, blah, blah. You need the short hair to be a real model.

[C]

And.

[A]

And we were all watching, being like, this is what models do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She goes to try and be a real model. And they're like, absolutely not. Grow your hair out. She has to have a friend buy her hair extensions.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And that's when she starts modeling and getting a lot of work in New

[B]

York because she has long hair.

[A]

But it's like, so they didn't know Tyrus Ball is. I mean, in.

[B]

Did you ever go to her ice cream thing on the west side?

[A]

God, I'm sorry. No. Please remind me. And this is gonna be a perfect segue into what she wrote about Tyra. What is the ice cream thing?

[B]

She had some ice. She might still. I don't know. It's some ice cream shop on the west side. I went once. It wasn't that special ice cream shop. I know. And now Tyra's all like, I've gained weight. Look at me. I'm modeling. I'm plus size. I'm this. And it's all just like, no, girl, you're Tyra. And everyone wants to see you be a hot mess. And that's why people have the camera out.

[A]

Tyra, you're a brand. You're famous.

[B]

Yes, you're famous.

[A]

Okay, so Sarah writes this. At the very end, she's talking to Jenna, who was on the show with her. They'd kept in sporadic touch over the year, and one day, Sarah says, I'm thinking of writing a book about Top Model. After some back and forth, eventually she let me know that this was a bittersweet conversation for her because, frankly, she was still traumatized by her time on the show. Quote, I think the whole industry needs to be taken down, she said. I told her I'd think about what she said and we'd talk more. Later, I hung up, taken aback back. Had we been on the same show? Did things get worse after I was eliminated? Or had I just gotten lucky and somehow snuck through the reality television gauntlet unscathed? Then I started writing. I read my own words and was shocked. For years, I'd been glossing over the details of my own memories. Even in conversations with my closest friends, stories poured out of me onto the page. Stories I'd never said out loud because some part of me knew that if I did, they would become real. To do so would force me to see them for what they were. Deeply impactful. And yes, even traumatic trauma in the NDA kept Everything buried deep down. Although after all these years, I've had a hard time being afraid of the men in suits on that cruise ship. And basically she would pass on to people the phrases they had told her about her experience because she just learned to say it. I just think that's so impactful. It explains the experience of trauma so well, where you're like, I'm fine. And then there's some moment you look at things you've known your entire life, life, and all of a sudden you realize everything is not okay.

[B]

Yeah. I do love, though, as a writer who I can't even stand reading my own stuff. I've never read. I've never read anything I wrote and was like, that's good.

[C]

That's.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

To be fair, I think she was like, wait, someone almost died?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. She probably had an awakening, which is I. Very valid and fair. I'm just saying from a comedic, funny perspective. I literally every time I send anything to an editor, I'm like, I don't give a fuck. Tear it up, dude. You got to do with it. Rewrite it if you want. I don't give a fuck. I'm done.

[A]

Okay, so here's what she wrote about Tyra. Tyra Banks set out to change the fashion industry, and she did it. It is more inclusive and diverse because of her and her show. Maybe it's naive of me, but I don't think she set out to do harm. I think she set out to create a show that opened a window into the fashion world to audiences at home, where she could mentor models into successful careers. But the show quickly outgrew these noble intentions set aflame by toxic fuel. The very first winner, Adrienne Curry, never received her contract with Revlon. And the winners of fashion and modeling world, they didn't translate to television. And so they had to create higher and higher stakes. And in my case, those stakes did not reflect of the reality of what it was like to be a plus size model. And then she talks about how it's a deeply toxic industry and a lot of harm happened. And someone says, what would you say to Tyra now? She writes, it's a complicated question. On the one hand, she provided me with one of the biggest opportunities of my life. I owe her a lot. I know that. On the other hand, I lost myself on the show. They broke me down and took advantage of my trauma. It took years of hard work and therapy to find myself again. The biggest thing I had to learn was how to see the world through my own eyes instead of constantly focusing on how the world viewed me to climb down from my dissociated tower. And so I love how complicated she writes about it. And I have a question for you, because, you know, we both came up in entertainment. We are in entertainment. And especially. Especially in our years when we were in our 23 years old.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

You enter the industry and they tell you, this is gonna brutalize you and fuck you up. And especially in my years, like, when I was, like, doing comedy in comedy theaters, it was like, there's a thousand people to replace you.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know what I mean? Like, if you want this, you will go through hell. And I was like, great. No problem. And I will. And, like, there's like, five years of my life where I didn't go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving because I was making $68 doing comedy on social. Some terrible stage.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Now, in retrospect, it's like, it shouldn't be like that. Or we look at reality shows like Love is Blind, and it's like, you know, they should change how these shows are thought. Thought of. And then there's people like Nick File being like, that's the show.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's what you sign up for. So you're. You're. You're saying it's okay to go through this brutal thing. I'm really curious your opinion on the industry and going in knowing it's horrible and that being okay. Versus. Yeah, you know, it's like, did America's Next Top Model offer up enough that the toxicity was worth it, or was it horrific and never should have happened?

[B]

I mean, two perspectives. I do. I don't think it's horrific and never should have happened, because I do think it holds. It's an. It's a very interesting pop culture nugget that I think is valuable and created language and formats for different shows to come. And so it was. It was definitely a stumbling block onto other things that. That other shows sort of perfected in a maybe more professional way. That said, it's so interesting what you say about, like, the entertainment industry, because, like, when I started, I was just doing standup, and I. I had this mindset, especially around all these straight comics, this mindset of, I will do standup, and I'll either get in a writer's room or I'll get my own show and be an actor. And, like, that was the lane that was the two lanes that I could do, and there was nothing else I could do. There was no other lane. And I was. And I. And I Got it. I got to be in writers rooms and I got. I got to do those things. And I. And while I was in those writers rooms, exhausted, I wasn't performing, which is something that I loved. And I also didn't feel like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. And so I was devastated because it felt like something was wrong with me. It felt like something like I got the thing I wanted and now how it's not enough. What's wrong with me? And then I got cancer. And after cancer, I was like, not that cancer, everyone go out and get cancer. But like, I got cancer. And after that I was just like, fuck all of this. I don't wanna. I don't want to work in these rooms with straight dudes who smell like Old Spice. And I don't want to be around all these people doing these things when I can maybe figure out a lane for myself that I'm happy about that gives me that scratches the itch that I like, which is making money off of me, being me and figuring out ways to do that. And I took a very. Of course, it wasn't monetarily necessarily always successful, but I took a lane that focused more on podcasting or journalism or putting my personality out there or going into drag and doing stand up through drag or like doing it in different ways that isn't as. I'm not getting the Netflix special that Maybe I envisioned 10 years ago before Net, if Netflix was a thing, I guess. But like, I. I'm not getting that. But I'm also very happy with what I am doing and the respect that I do have within the industry and my little part of it. And so, yeah, it's so complicated because the society tells you one thing, that there's one lane, and you focus on that one lane or you're going to be a up and you're going to fail and everyone's going to laugh at you. And I don't think that's true anymore. And I hope people are recognizing that younger people. I hope people are recognizing that there are lots of lanes. There are so many goddamn lanes. And you can even make your own goddamn lane and figure out your own way. And Sarah really proved it throughout the book that through her own sort of unique perspective on even competing in this, she was creating her own kind of lane of thinking in a way. You know what I mean?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, I think that was so beautifully said and even it bringing her to this book. And she's a writer and she's funny and all these things that would come together. I think I want to read the last three sentences because I think it goes perfect perfectly with what you just said. All of that is to say I was one of many who were traumatized by the actions of Tyra and the producers, but still, I am grateful. So here's what I would say. Thank you. Pay me.

[B]

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

[A]

And I think that's it. Yeah, you listen. You want them. You want them to be awake for 17 hours and not speaking to each other? Okay. Pay a minimum wage.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, just pay. I'll do that. Just pay. Just pay for that. But also, too, like, I have that same sentiment. Not so much the pay part, because I do always want to get paid paid more, but the idea of, like, those years of me trying to get to that goal, that unattainable and not desirable goal that I had of, you know, working in a writer's room or doing those things, it gave me. It's partly why you and I know each other. It's because it gave me the circle and the respect in the comedy world amongst my peers in that era of people who did go on and get great success and that I can walk into a room and people know, comedians and writers know who I am, and. And I value that respect. And those years of doing the thing that didn't necessarily pan out the way I thought it was gonna pan out have given me that respect and given me those. That access to that stuff. And I'm grateful for that.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's so fascinating because, yeah, she says, I was traumatized, and I'm grateful. It's really horrible. Because ideally, you'd want the whole system to not uphold all this trauma and pain.

[B]

It'll never be the. Right now some intimacy coordinator out there is doing something that is fucking someone up because everything needs progress. Everything. So the. It's good that the intimacy coordinator's there, but, like, there's more that could be done, there's better that could come from that. Like, and that's how it's never gonna be perfect. And I kind of value that in everything, you know, that, like, nothing is ever a hundred percent. And you learn from the bits that aren't perfect because then it makes you that more perfect. But I think what keeps us. Us creative people at least keeps us hungry, is that we never quite reach perfection. And we're always looking for perfection. We're always trying to get there, and that keeps us being creative. That keeps us going.

[A]

In Tyra's moments, she was doing things that for those Years were woke were progressive that she was hosting a show. And we look back on it, it's like you're actually a terrorist.

[B]

But.

[A]

But she pushed forward. She fucked up a lot, but she pushed forward. And I think we could say that about a lot. Really any topic we would go to cover.

[B]

And it's so interesting. I'm doing this now because I'm actually listening to Barack Obama's audiobook, like, of his. Cause I was like, I've never listened to it. I've never read it. I wanna read it. And so I'm listening to that talk. Him talk about this era at the same time. And it's fascinating because it's just like we were going towards a direction of change, but like, there are stumbling blocks. There always will be. And it's kind of interesting to look back on it and see how it made us kind of who we are now. Now.

[A]

Oh, I love that. Okay, we're doing the book test. Three questions. We both answer all three questions. First question, was the author vulnerable and the sharing of her truth?

[B]

Yes. Oh, yes.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. Second question, was it entertaining to read?

[B]

Yes, very much so. Surprisingly, I have to say, I was expecting one thing and it went in a different direction.

[A]

Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was just a great bts.

[B]

Well, can I add to that? Actually, it was a great BTS that from a cultural perspective, a pop culture cultural perspective, it actually is a valuable resource for understanding how reality television production was happening at that time. So if you're a reality TV nerd, or TV nerd in general, TV history nerd, it's actually a really good read to understand what was going on then.

[A]

Oh, totally agree. Okay, final question. Did reading this book elevate your life in any way?

[B]

Yes, it did. Because, you know, it gave me a perspective on something that I don't think there's a lot out there of. And I'm someone who talks about TV a lot and TV history a lot. And there aren't that many books on reality T. Competition, reality TV in this way.

[A]

Oh, I love that. Yeah, I. I don't even think I. I realize that, but you're so right.

[B]

Yeah, I've read housewives books. I've read other books like that, but there's not many on competition reality tv, which is a very different lane than the Bravos or the even. You know what I mean? Like, even the dating shows, like, it's a. When you have a competition element to it, it a real competition, not a love competition. Addition. It. It definitely. It adds a Different lane. You know what I mean? It's, like, different. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, I totally agree. And, yeah, this definitely elevated my life. I. I did struggle with disordered eating for so many years of my life. And to go back to 2007, when I was very much in that time, and read the mind frame of someone else, like, really being put through that, and as, like, the quote plus size contestant on reality tv, it just. I had so much love for her.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That it kind of becomes love for yourself of, like, all these harmful things you were, you know, that she does to herself in this book and on the show. But also she's protecting herself. But also she's trying. But also she feels so free. She's the first one to, like, get naked and jump in the pool. And that was something. In 2007, like, I would have. I would have gotten to the pool with a full comforter rep drop.

[B]

Same. Oh, my God. Same.

[A]

And so it's a kind of. Of, like, hear about her life and the choices she made. I just felt so much love for her. And then I felt so much love for, like, 2007 me.

[B]

Same, same. Yeah, I like that. Oh, I like.

[A]

I adore you. You are such a dream. I know everyone already listens to your podcast, but please tell everyone where to listen, where to follow. There's several places.

[B]

So, yeah, no, I made Challenge Scott on everything. You can listen to my celebrity interviews and pop culture stuff on the parting shot. And to have you on, I have to do Friday episodes where we talk about pop culture and have you on. And I have the Golden Girls podcast, and then you can see me performing as Sadie Pines wherever you want in drag.

[A]

Yes, I love that. Also, have you ever read Rue McClanahan's memoir?

[B]

Have I read it, girl? I went to Barracuda in New York to get her to sign it. Thank you. I. I trust me, if. Yes, I went to the. I love that she went. She had her book signing when she was live, God rest her soul. Her memory is a blessing. When she had her book signing at a gay bar called Barracuda in Chelsea in New York, there's just no other human that did it like Rue McClanahan.

[A]

I agree. And I gotta tell you, I'm having, like, a psychic moment with her. I swear to God. We'll end the podcast after this. Every day when something happens, her voice pops in my head and it's this, oh, Ru, don't you know that every kick's a boost?

[B]

That's so perfect. I love you.

[A]

I am going to Interview Sarah Hartsworn about her memoir about being on America's Next Top Model Season 9. Please know there is a trigger warning for disordered eating and diet culture discussion. Now let's dive in. Sarah, I'm so excited to talk to you about your book. And first I have to shout out Sam Reese from Shitty Crafts Club for connecting us.

[C]

Yes. Love, Sam.

[A]

Yeah, you're already in the glamorous trash universe by being good friends with Sam.

[C]

I mean, also, glamorous trash is just. That's my absolute, like, goal at all times.

[A]

Like, I could tell in the book, I was like, ooh, yes, we are one. We are the same.

[C]

Thank you so much. Thank you.

[A]

Yes. Okay. I have so many questions I want to ask you. I'm just going to dive in. Okay, so. So in the book, you talk about having these horrifying lectures given to you from the producers to a bunch of 20 somethings about, like, suing you into oblivion and legally, they'd ruin your life. In that chapter, you're also taking quotes from the book cultish to discuss severe manipulation that was happening through these. Like, you'll be sued forever. So now you've written this memoir, and memoirs go through really intense legal processes. What was the legal process of writing this book?

[C]

That is such a good question, and thank you for asking. Cause a lot of people have been like, are they gonna sue you? So this is a great question. Cause it just lets me explain how. Hopefully not.

[A]

Yeah, no. And they. But I know that they put the fear of God into you to make you have these fears of, like, oh, my God, I'm gonna be sued.

[C]

You know, they very much did put the fear of God in us. And it was so much fundamentally at odds to who I am. Like, what I learned from this process is that I am terrible at keeping a secret. And it was so funny. Cause, like, directly after the show, I was so broke, and I ended up working at a Lord and Taylor selling shoes, which I thought I would be so good at because I was a great waitress. So I was like, oh, I'll be great at this. I was awful. I honestly, like, my boyfriend had to bail me out, like, and pay rent

[A]

because it was like, commission based, probably. And you couldn't lie about these shoes.

[C]

And 100%, they'd be like, where'd you get your shoes? And I'd be like, marshall's. I mean, I mean, here. And really, I'm such a compulsive oversharer that an NDA really hates to see me coming. And we did Sign an NDA. We did sign this contract that did really tie our hands in a lot of ways, but it also expired after the final episode of the show aired. Not my cycle, but the show itself. So Top Model did exist in many different iterations with a couple different hosts. I think three different hosts. Hosts over a total of, I think, 27 cycles. Which, incidentally, I should verify this information. Someone years ago told me that it was called cycles because they often did more than one a year. I actually don't know if that's true, but it sounded right. So I was like, okay. That's why they don't call them seasons. So eventually, the show did officially go off the air, and anything that would come back would technically be a reboot and would be a different show. So that happened in. In, I wanna say, 20, I think 19 or 20, 21 or some amount of years ago.

[A]

I love that that was in the contract. Thank God.

[C]

So what happened is I submitted the draft and legal read it, and legal kind of pored over it with a fine tooth comb, and they were like, okay, is this true? To give an example of how fine tooth it was, like, at one point I used the phrase hidden camera, and they were like, if you knew they were there, you can't say that they were hidden cameras.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The questions are insane.

[C]

And so then we really had to go back and forth because I was like, okay. But there were cameras that we didn't know were there, that we later discovered were there. And they were like, okay. And then, like, I ended up using the phrase possibly hidden or. You know what I mean?

[A]

Like, just. Just for legal wording.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. And there were some things that I couldn't confirm that, like, some girls had said happened. And so I had to be very clear that, like, I didn't know if it happened. I heard that it happened, someone said that it happened. Yeah, lots of, like, quoting people whenever I could. And I also. I tried to be really careful when I interviewed people. I tried to be both careful for me and considerate of them. So I was like, I'm gonna record it. Like, if there's anything that you don't want to answer, don't answer. If there's anything that you change your mind about later, that's fine.

[A]

Yeah. You were really protective of the other girls, the way they were not protective of y'. All.

[C]

That's nice.

[A]

Sarah.

[C]

I didn't know. I was like, I can't repeat the mistake.

[B]

You know, that would be.

[A]

Exactly. So what about emotionally, though? Like, emotionally, they had made you feel like they were gonna destroy your life. So when you went to write the book, did you have to push through that fear or were you at a settled place where it was like, no, like, this deserves to be told. And I'm okay.

[C]

I wish I could say that I had some sense of justice or some sense of altruism, but I'm. I really am. Like I said, just a compulsive orvo sharer. Like, this was gonna come out in some way or another. You know what I mean? It was either gonna be tick or conversation or whatever platform and capacity I have. This story was coming out of me. And I think, you know, I got so lucky that I got an amazing literary agent who was like, this could be a book. Like, I see the potential here and was able to, like, shape it in this way that I can feel really good about it and that people can be like, oh, this story needed to be told. And there. Here's this, like, good reason for it. Meanwhile, I'm just like, I am a literal blabbermouth.

[A]

And.

[C]

And it was like, I love that ever will listen. Like, whoever will listen. I'm all, say it.

[A]

We are all seated. Okay, so in the book, I really. I just loved how you would never give the producers the sound bite they wanted, Especially when they were pushing, like, sad plus sized girl model story. And they wanted you to give sound bites, like, being mean to yourself or being mean to others. And you would tell. Start telling them shark facts, like facts about shark sharks in order to get them to stop. And so now, though, you're selling a memoir, which also kind of asks for those same marketing quips, Hot takes on America's next top Model. Like, you know, give me the quote. And so I am so curious how you are navigating this part of it, because it feels like you're being put into the same thing again.

[C]

Very much. And it's so funny because I failed to give them the sound bites that they wanted at first, despite the fact that I was desperately trying. I was trying to do what they wanted, and I was just failing because I didn't have the knowledge base to understand. Like, they wanted me to be very positive. They wanted me to be very body positive, very pro plus size. You know, they wanted me to be like, these skinny bitches don't eat. I do. Curvy girls rock.

[A]

Yeah. They wanted the dove commercial.

[C]

I literally hadn't seen a dove commercial.

[A]

You hadn't learned it yourself yet, and

[C]

I didn't believe it myself. And so I couldn't do it. And so it came out of weeks of, like, a people pleaser bashing her head into a wall, being like, I can't please them. And finally was like, I can't please them. And also, I knew that, like, I didn't want to say certain things that they were saying. Right. I was like, okay, I don't understand what you want, and I'm failing in that way. And then what I do understand, I don't fucking like. So I'm just gonna do Sharkbank. But it is interesting now. Yeah. Trying to. To market the memoir and, like. Yeah. Pulling sound bites and it's so, you know, know I'm not type A. I'm. I don't even think I'm type B. I think I'm type G. You know what I mean? Like, I'm really.

[A]

Also my bra size.

[C]

So it's same. Well, yeah, used to. Now I think I know I might be a G. I was an I for a hot second right after I gave birth, and I was like, aye, aye aye.

[A]

That's also a great bra size. The ay yai yai ay. I've given birth. Give me the ay yi yi bra.

[C]

I used to say that G stands for my boobs are sweaty.

[A]

Yeah, listen, that's a. If that was a tagline on a bra, I'd buy it 100%.

[C]

But there are certain things that, like, in the process of writing the book, I was sort of talking to my friends about it, and one of them on Twitter, where I am not at all anymore, but I used to be, was like, hey, Sarah, typing out, like, in a tweet, like, hey, Sarah, is it true? Isn't it true that you didn't get paid in response to some tweet about Top Model? And I responded And I said, $40 a day, no residual. And we had to pay for our own food. Just like a real casual reply to a friend.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it went so viral, it ended up being, like, in the Guardian. It ended up being in USA Today. It was in. It got, like, picked up. I try to be very careful about how I use the term viral, but when it was getting picked up by publications, I was like, okay, this might be viral. And it haunts me so much because we actually got paid 37 a day. And it truly, like, it just.

[A]

You rounded.

[C]

I rounded up. You know, people would, like, reach out for interview requests, and I'd be like, I will absolutely do an interview if you will clarify that. It was 37. Like, my. I have no stipulations. Other than that.

[A]

That's amazing. So I just want to repeat that. $37 a day, no residuals.

[C]

Most days, no residuals. We did not get paid every day.

[A]

So it was just like, filming days, not like travel days.

[C]

It was a cash stipend for which we were supposed to pay for our food. Right.

[A]

So. So it wasn't even really being paid. It was just. You get $37 a day for food. So. Okay.

[C]

And that includes ordering out, ordering meals, or, like, we could give them grocery lists every week. They would have a grocery trip. But after we got eliminated, we had to stay in a hotel for an undetermined amount of time. It was different for every girl. Some girls were there for two days. I was there for two weeks. One girl was there for over a month. We did not get paid for those.

[A]

So I got a lot of questions on our Patreon and our Instagram when I said I was interviewing you about Ebony, and that was a part of the book where I was just. The gasp lasted maybe, like, 37 seconds. Like, I was like. Where basically Ebony cried to just leave the show. She's like, I just want to go home. I can't do this. And then you get to the hotel, and you've been there for weeks and weeks, and you find you run into Ebony, who all she wanted to do was go home. And then she was locked in a hotel by herself for an entire month.

[C]

And so, yeah, she did not have the key. And then they brought her to China. They kept her for almost two months.

[A]

Two months.

[C]

Almost two months in solitary confinement in a hotel room that she did not have the key to a hotel room.

[A]

She didn't have the key to solitary confinement. And she had broke down and left the show just so she could talk to and see her family. Yeah, that was so hard to take.

[C]

And looking back, I didn't know that they took her to China at the time. I found out years later because there

[A]

was an episode happening there, and.

[C]

And, like, yeah, they brought all the girls to China, and they brought a few because they were basically decoys because paparazzi recognized the van. So anytime we showed up anywhere, there would be paparazzi. So they would have decoy girls. Sometimes they were girls from the cycle. Sometimes they were, like, extras that they hired that would, like, follow us in. The paparazzi couldn't count and be like, okay, there's five left. There's six left. However many.

[A]

But also, it's so cruel to specifically bring Ebony. And not that I want it to happen to anyone. But it's like, why did they bring someone else?

[C]

Like, and there was so much that I personally excused for years. For years, I really. I drank the Kool Aid. Or as I recently found out, it wasn't Kool Aid. It was like some other brand of sugary drink.

[A]

Oh, you mean at Jonestown?

[C]

At Jonestown. It's a different. It's not Kool Aid. It's like Sweet Aid or something. Anyways, I forget what it actually is, but I really parroted what the producers had told me for years. And I bought it and I was like, no, they weren't malicious. And no, it was all just to make good tv. And that was this, like, excuse that I had coming out of my mouth all the time that I really believed. And when I was writing the book and I realized that they had done that to Ebony, I was like, that. That didn't make it to air. No one knew that they did that. That was just malicious. That was just punishment. I mean, she was 19, a 19

[A]

year old, and they're just punishing her because they're mad that she wanted to go home. So. Okay, I want to compare this to, like, recently we've heard, heard Love is Blind contestants being like, hey, the conditions they film in are horrific. Other people push back. Like Nick Viall being like, that's just reality tv, that's signing onto a production. It's also when you work on a production for, like, something fictional, the hours are crazy, the whatever is crazy. But in a reality show, you guys couldn't speak to each other unless the cameras were there. You didn't have your phones. They often wouldn't give you your books. They would only sometimes give you your ipods. And so you would be in a room alone for hours and hours and hours. One time it was 17 hours. But you were not alone, allowed to speak to each other. So it's set up to truly make you go crazy. Do you think filming reality TV has gotten any better? Or when the Love Is Blind castmates are talking about their horrible conditions. Is this just the same thing continuing on?

[C]

I think in some ways it has gotten better because, I mean, I was on top model in 2009, so it was really the wild west of reality TV. And so there were a lot of things that they could get away with then that I don't think they could get away with now just in terms of, of, like, guarding our physical safety. And I think that there were things that happened on, like, early other, you know, other shows that hopefully would not happen now, however, I will say when I watch shows like Love island, which I actually really try not to do because it's a little triggering for me, I'm sure the drinking stresses me out, because if I could have drank when I was on the show, and I know that other girls did have alcohol pushed a lot more aggressive. Later cycles, they pushed alcohol a lot more aggressively, including on girls who were underage in subtle, very difficult to ever, like, prove ways. You know, they just, you know, let them know workarounds for how they could make it happen. Yeah.

[A]

I would have been like, oop, Well, I would have been drunk.

[C]

I would have been. Cause it was so stressful and it was so weird. And even at that age when I didn't have a lot of exposure or understanding of drinking anything to take the edge off, I would have done, of course, anything that would have been made available to me. So when I see them drink, I find it so stressful. And that is something that I think is becoming just sort of accepted as part of how we. Like. Like, when I watch the. Any episode I've ever tried to watch of, like, the Bachelor or the Bachelor.

[A]

Especially the Bachelor. Especially Bachelor in Paradise.

[C]

No, it just feels like, how are you. Like, how are they able to consent to anything that's happening?

[A]

Yeah. And oftentimes not. It's so fascinating because on RuPaul's Drag Race, you know, know, they only allow them, like, their two drinks.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And sometimes it's one. And so it's like you. It is something you really can regulate, and they've chosen not to.

[C]

And also, I do still think that, like, there's a long way to go in terms of how we treat reality show contestants. I do think that shows like the Great British Bake off have shown us that, like, you can have people having a nice time, and it still makes good tv. People want to watch it.

[A]

Yeah. And I. I also to. Truly selfishly, I want real reality tv, because that's the stakes of it, and high stakes make something great to watch. I don't want to watch people fake it. Like, let people truly live. That's the better television.

[C]

But, yeah, and pay them for their time.

[A]

And pay them for their time. 37. You know, I really related to you on that because I was a traveling, touring comedian, and we would get paid for show nights. $98. But then you also got a 25 per day per diem per day you were traveling. And just. I was like, I will be buying one tortilla and a bag of nuts. So that $20 stays in my pocket. Because you were saving money by sending a grocery list of. What was it? Rice.

[C]

And it was refried beans, eggs, and iceberg lettuce and iceberg and hot sauce. Yeah. Yeah. I love. So listen, I know this is the trash. This is the trash part of my equation is I love iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce with ranch and bacon bits.

[A]

Oh, that's. Yeah. And see, and now I'm vegetarian and I get the fake bacon bit. Well, I guess bacon bits are already vegetarian.

[C]

They're all fake. They're all little soy chips. Little crunchy soy chips, girl, all the time.

[A]

When you were like, I was eating refried beans and hot sauce and some rice, I was like, absolutely. Poor man's burrito, 100%.

[C]

But you know what's so lovely about being, like, recovered from an eating disorder is, like, now, I do still eat that for breakfast, but it's like this beautiful, much more nutritious, like, delicious and seasoned version of it. Like, it's like, like blue corn tortilla chips crumpled up in there. A little pickled onion.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Like, maybe a fried egg. A lot of, like. Yeah, a lot of hot sauce. A lot of, like, a little bit, like, full fat cheese. Get out of town. Like, I eat it and I'm like, this is joyful. This is not restrictive in every way.

[A]

I just want to say for everyone listening, we're gonna do a whole episode on your book. But I loved, loved, loved how you talked about disordered eating because we're also in that same club. And the way you wrote about it was so exact to how it feels, which is like, it's not happening, but it is happening, but it's being pushed on you. But, like, wait, what's going on? And then like, the way you're like, no, I'm totally fine. And then you would read your journal entries back and be like, oh, my God, so frustrating. Yeah.

[C]

So, girl, write about what happened. I don't care how much I weighed.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. I guess I just have the one quick question, which is like, you were put in this plus size position, but then they were like, you're too small to be plus size. And I think a lot. Everyone viewing was also feeling the exact same way. And they're like, but you can't be. But you can't be a model, because whatever. And so then they kept putting this storyline on you of like, are you trying to lose weight? Are you trying to lose weight? What storyline were they trying to force on you with that? Were they trying to bring something malicious out.

[C]

I think that when they realized that I just didn't have it in me to be the rah rah, curvy girl, rock real women have curves candidate because the cycle after mine, a plus sized girl won, and she was very body positive. And which is amazing. Like, I'm not.

[A]

You were just like, I've been taught to hate myself, and I hate myself on this show. And the way what you're saying to me makes me hate myself. But, like, so I can't be positive right now.

[C]

We still have a long way to go in terms of media representation, and we're backsliding a lot right now. Like, and that's a whole. I can get into a whole rant about how fashion. We had less plus size representation than it's had in years, like, in 2025. But one thing I do think that is positive that we maybe take for granted sometimes is, like, we have phrases. We have words that are in the vernacular, like, even just saying, like, real women have curves. That's a phrase that we have heard before. I had never heard that before. We had never heard, like, love your body, embrace your curves. I just didn't have that language. I didn't have those cultural references. I didn't have that in the bank of. Of knowledge in my brain, so I couldn't parrot it back at them.

[A]

Oh, that's such a beautiful point. And I just, like, want to zone in on, like, this is 2009. Quick little fix here. Cycle nine of America's Next Top Model taped and aired in 2007, not 2009. Okay, back to the app. I talk about this way too much on the podcast, but when I go back, it's all boleros, boleros, boleros, boleros. Over everything I wore because I was like, oh, I have fat arms. I should hide my arms. Because that's like, what's this? And that was totally illogical. But it's like, I'm in a gown. I've got a little sweater bolero over it. Like, I'm in anything. A bolero. And that's not that long ago that you were like, I don't even know the words to say to be a positive figure.

[C]

I just don't. Yeah, I just don't. I just don't have it. And I mean, part of that is also that I grew up, you know, in a town of 685 people. There were a lot of cultural phrases that I didn't have in my background. And in My head. So, like, that was also a factor. But, you know, is it as much a part of the conversation? Like, is body positivity often equally toxic? Yes, but it exists and it's there and it's something. You know what I mean? It's something. Yeah.

[A]

And we're, in fact, backsliding. I know this from a really smart Patreon members. You know, eating disorders are the worst they've ever been. Body positivity in the stats is the worst it's ever been. But at least there's a language that exists to discuss it, which is a really tiny win. Wish there was more. Okay, I have another question.

[C]

There's goal posts.

[A]

Yeah. There's at least the sound bite.

[C]

And I was just swinging blind at the time. I had no goal posts. Yeah. And so. So I think once they were like, oh, she can't do that. Then they were like, all right, well, she doesn't like her body. Let's go after that. And then because I'm obstinate, I was like, nuh. I mean, I do, but, like, the shush.

[A]

Like, that's my secret.

[C]

It's shameful. Like, I at least know that's shameful. You know what I mean? I know that I'm not supposed to. And so, yeah.

[A]

What a complicated knot to be in. So one thing that is really wild for me to think about is if you compare the skill set of modeling to a reality show about, like, singers. The skill set of singing American Idol produced, you know, Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia Barrino contracts, album deals. There's actually, like, I don't know, I bet I could get to, like, 20 names of. Of singers that I know who went on to some sort of success. Why did America's Next Top Model not produce the equivalent when it comes to models?

[C]

So I don't want to discount the girls who did become successful models after the show. Like, I will say Fatima fans from cycle 10. She has walked in Milan, in Paris. She's been in every major high fashion magazine.

[A]

Great. Okay.

[C]

Lisa Jackson from my cycle was a working model for years. Still is, I think.

[A]

And I want to say, like, I'm not saying, like, no one ever modeled again. No one ever found success. I'm saying Tyra seemed to be promising. You're going to be Christy Brinkley. Like, these are the supermodels in the world, and we've given you a TV show to make this a household name. Whereas, like, not all models are. Are known. Because I know a lot of models are really successful. So I also don't Want to discount that. I just. It just feels like the promise of the show didn't pay off in the ways that sometimes the promise of those other reality shows did pay off.

[C]

Yeah. I think also we think of modeling as being so glamorous. A lot of people don't understand the reality of being a working model. Like a. You can be a very successful model and not make enough that you don't need to supplement with other jobs. Like, I. When I was modeling in New York, I was doing catalog stuff. So I was getting well paid for photos that were not good. I was getting paid a lot to wear, like, you know, nightgowns with Minnie Mouse on them. So, like, that doesn't seem glamorous or seem fun. But I was also, you know, getting to travel and I was getting to fly, you know, to Europe every month and, like, getting paid $1,000 a day to do it. And so I was like a working model. I made a living wage for model modeling in ways that don't seem glamorous or exciting. I got paid $1,000 a day to wear plus size dirndls and plus size nightgowns. I did a cover of a Vogue magazine with Baz Luhrmann.

[A]

Okay, that's amazing.

[C]

Yeah, I got paid 100 bucks, and then it got bumped up to 150. Cause I ended up on the COVID Oh, my God.

[A]

Oh, my God. Okay, so you have this really great video you made on Instagram about Tyra's impact.

[B]

Impact.

[A]

Because Tyra's taken a lot of heat, I have to tell you. Like, I remember watching the show, but I rewatched it when I was reading your book, and it's like. Like, I can't believe. I can't believe that was television. I can't believe that was shown to us in any way of, like, this is a normal TV show. Like, it's so insane. And so people are watching it back with a critical lens, including things like, why are there challenges where people are put into blackface? Multiple episodes and so. And then multiple. Multiple seasons apart. Also, you know, Tyra is a black woman. So it's also like, there's this dynamic of, like, wait, but she is signed off on it. But also tyran her own show. Remember she used to come out in fat suits and be like, a day in the life as a fat. Like, here's how I experience life.

[C]

So she also did day in the life of a homeless person.

[A]

I believe she's really. I think that's like her. That's something in her brain. That she enjoys, like, day in the life of, I don't know, cosplaying as oppressed. And so anyways, people are really critical. However, we also have to be like, this was one of the only black women getting her own TV show hosting in that time. You had a really nuanced take on this. And I just want to hear what are your thoughts in hindsight, looking back on Tyra's impact, not only on you all on the show, but on the girls and people everywhere who watch the show.

[C]

You know, people comment this on a lot of my tiktoks, and I think it's true. Like, she does bear the. Maybe an unfair level of the brunt of the blame.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

There was a whole team of producers, there was a whole network, there were sponsors who were all pushing wheels forward and putting things in motion that do not have to deal with these consequences. Furthermore, like, okay, I haven't seen any of the seasons where Janice Dickinson was a judge, but I have seen some clips where she said some pretty unforgivable things. Yeah. And she's gotten to have this redemption arc where, oh, she was just doing what she thought she was supposed to do. She was just doing what producers told her to. And it's like, okay, well, there were a lot of judges on that show, and not all of them said the things that you said. And also, you know, I will say that, like, my personal experience was that the most hurtful things said to me were by turning Twiggy, and nobody has ever had a problem with her. Yeah.

[A]

The Twiggy stuff in the book is heinous.

[C]

And I'm not saying that Twiggy is a bad person and doesn't deserve redemption and needs to be, you know, publicly flogged. That is not what I'm advocating at all. I'm just saying, like, the comparison of

[A]

why do certain people take the heat and not others. Yeah, absolutely. Right, Absolutely. And, you know, Tyra as the host, obviously in a certain position. And also, you know, she's given us those, like, we were all rooting for you, you know, but it's a lot to look back on. Also, Mr. J. Manuel, different from Ms. J, really seemed like he fucking hated being there. Was that true?

[C]

I have read his book, and it is wild. It's really interesting because there are all these little glimmers where I'm like, well, I know. That really happened.

[A]

Wow. So the book is. When you read it, you're like, that's real. Or did you feel like some of

[C]

it was made, some of it is very extreme. I mean, like, the Nigel character is secretly gay. I certainly am not. And that is. You know, I always.

[A]

Yeah. It's of their writing. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. And I had always heard the rumor that Nigel slept with a contestant every cycle, and then that in no way materialized. I mean, that I know of. I don't want, you know, but we didn't see any evidence of that. He was never, like, inappropriate or anything. But that was always the rumor that I had heard. And so then there was. Yeah. This different rumor that, you know. Yeah. The character is gay, I think. And then also there's a lot of backstory between, quote, unquote, the Tyra character and the Ken Mott character that I don't think is. I think is. For the sake of the novel, I've got to imagine that Mr. J's NDAs and contracts were much more Limited.

[A]

Explicit. Yeah.

[C]

Even than mine. And also, the ramifications that Mr. J would face are a lot. Right. Like, you know, if Ken Mock never wants to work with me again, then I. And I'm like, nice.

[B]

Awesome.

[C]

That sounds great.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Mutual.

[A]

That's the producer of the show. The creator of the show.

[C]

Yeah. Not that he couldn't. I'm sure if he wanted to, he could inflict damage on me. I'm not trying to say, you know, that he's not a powerful figure in.

[A]

You're just saying you don't want to work with him.

[C]

I just personally would not. If he asked me to work with him, I would not. So. Yeah.

[A]

And that's a name people don't know. But we do know Tyrus, his name, you know.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And that's. That's really. Because some of Ken's lines like, okay, so I worked on a cruise ship. So when y' all went and were filming on a cruise ship, all I could think of was that tropical hits from 2001 to 2005 play on loop on a cruise ship. How did they deal with the sound? And then you have this scene where Ken was like, turn off the music. But, I mean, that music goes throughout the whole ship.

[C]

The whole ship. It's so funny you mentioned this, because I didn't put this in the book because it's sort of like just a weird little detail. It's not really relevant to the story at all. It plays all throughout the ship, and it plays in the hallways, but not in the conference room. So we would be sitting. When we were sitting in the conference rooms. In the book, I talk about this, but, like, we sat in cruise ship conference Rooms for hours and hours at a time, usually on ice, not able to talk. And then sometimes, yeah, the executives or the lawyers or the network executives would come in and give us the same spiel over and over again. So it was just like, I. I mean, literally, I think, you know, 75% of our time was spent sitting in these rooms where we would just hear. And then, you know, to open the door and it would be like.

[A]

And then like, oh, that is crazy. Making. And for anyone, it was crazy. I mean, listen, you should be listening to the book episode before you listen to this, but in case you have. Yes, for some reason, they shot two weeks of the show on a cruise ship. And then. And I didn't even realize it, but they're like, well, girls, you've been eliminated. You're staying on the island. And then they film that and they're like, no, get back on the cruise ship. And then they just have to, like, keep cruising home.

[C]

I talked to a girl who did get eliminated on the cruise ship and they flew out of the tiny little airport on the island. And also, like, it was crazy because. So they got all of their stuff off the cruise ship. Right. They knew already, obviously. Obviously. But they got all their stuff. What I really wonder is if they got it right, because I talked to some girls in other cycles, not mine, who had, like, very precious things lost or stolen just in all the rigmarole of, like, being eliminated or being sent home or being kept in a hotel for weeks. Like, your stuff goes to a lot of places without you. You know, like, there's PAs who are supposed to sort everyone's stuff. Like, I know I talked to Claire Unabia and she lost, like, a very precious diamond ring that her husband had given her. Her. Or earring, maybe. And then she won. This is so funny to me. She won in one of the challenges, like a hello Kitty diamond necklace. And so she, when she was going home, she was like, this is, like, not as good.

[A]

Yeah, like, I don't want a hello Kitty necklace instead of I want the

[C]

precious jewelry that they lost. And I was like, I wonder, like, if they gave that to her, like, as this weird. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like, I don't know if it was. So I. But I just, like, I think about all those girls and I think about how devastating that must have been. And like, yeah, did they. I hope they, you know, I hope they all got their stuff. But it wasn't even, like, airlines that know, you know, ostensibly know how to handle luggage. It was like, pas who had a million other jobs. So I just. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, it's. Reading the book is just so. It's just so wild and also just, like, getting free shit in a trash bag and taking it home to your friends, but you're broke and you have no money because you spent it in the hotel. It's just like, nothing that any of us were imagining. Yeah. Okay. I have one big question, and then three very. We're doing a quick round. So in the book, you talk about realizing you are bisexual because other girls in the house were also queer and had varying, you know, identities that were discussed on camera. I could not believe that for a show that wants to scandalize and whatever, that they cut all of that from the show so that. Cause you were like, oh, my gosh. Did I just finally. Finally come out and come to terms with, like, I know who I am, but it's on camera. And they didn't even put it into the show.

[C]

None of it.

[A]

Why. Why do you think that was? Looking back, in hindsight, I really don't know.

[C]

Because, I mean, I don't know. I thought it was interesting.

[A]

Are you kidding me? 2009, multiple models which are only put through this patriarchal heterosexual eye, you know, are all queer and young women, like, coming out in different ways. Like, why would that not have made it? It's such a sad thing.

[C]

Yeah, I really don't know. And I. My only guess is that I think that maybe they were trying to go for, like, an innocent, naive farm girl angle with me, because, like, I remember early on very first callbacks, I was, like, so anxious because I was working as an administrative assistant during the day and a burlesque and go go dancer at night. And I was like, this. They're not gonna pick me because of this. And so I was, like, all ready to have them talk about it or, like, ask me about it. And they were like, tell us about the blueberry farm. I. And I was like, what? They were like, yeah, it says here you worked on a blueberry farm from age 11. Like, talk about that. And I was like, okay. And so I think, yeah, that's my only possible thing. Maybe it just was, like, too risky or.

[A]

Yeah, it's just interesting to be like, America's Next top model in 2009 was extremely heteronormative. I guess that makes sense. But, like, when you talk about the judges and all these things, like, it felt like a more queer, friendly show, and I guess maybe I. I got that wrong in my head.

[C]

Yeah, it's really Wild. But I guess. I mean, it's also. It was a cw, so maybe it was, like, not family friendly enough. I really don't know.

[A]

Meanwhile, models are being put in blackface and naked challenges.

[C]

I know. No. And, yeah, there's always a naked. Every single cycle, there's like, a naked challenge. Although I guess was there. There might not have been for ours, but. Yeah. I really don't know. It's very interesting.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, Lightning round three questions. These all come from the Patreon. How dirty was the house?

[C]

Very clean.

[A]

Ooh. Shocking, though, because the Bachelor house is disgusting.

[C]

Yeah, I know. No, they had a cleaning crew that came in while we were at photo shoots, and it. They would never move any of our stuff, so sometimes it got a little messy, but it wasn't dirty. But never dirty.

[A]

No. Have you spoken with Raja post show? Because Raja the makeup artist goes on to be, like, one. One of the RuPaul's dragons race seasons. A reality star of her own. Right. Have you spoken since?

[C]

I have not. I wish.

[A]

I hope on this book tour, you get to reconnect.

[C]

Me too. That would be amazing.

[A]

Has your PR reached out to her? Get on this. We need. We need a moment.

[C]

They have, but they have not. They have not responded. I think also they maybe want to distance themselves a little bit from Top Model, which I understand, but I would really love to, because Raja is magical.

[A]

So magical. Okay, final question. What's one of the Tyra phrases or skills that she taught you that still you either use or you are haunted by? Because I. I think about smizing, and I wasn't on the show.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I am aware that my mouth goes down, like, at the edge, and I will always, you know, like, it's. Yeah, it's a little bit of resting bitch face. And as I've gotten older, it's like, more pronounced and a little, like, you know, jowly. But every time. Yeah, I see a photo of me where it looks like I'm frowning, and I'm just, like, thinking. I'm like, like, huh, Huh? I have a downturned mouth. Because she. In one panel, in the first panel, she was like, you and Ebony have downturned mouth. It's really beautiful. And I was like, tara thinks it's beautiful.

[A]

I am a beautiful.

[C]

I am a beautiful.

[A]

Sarah. Thank you so much for writing this book. I loved reading it. It's such a cool format because we get to learn about your life, your history, your childhood. But it is like day one of auditioning through Getting Home, which is such a Great structure. I think it's what everyone wants. Wants. What is your favorite place to send people to to buy this book?

[C]

I mean, I guess I think it's bookshop.org or bookstore.org bookshop.

[A]

Org, yes. Where you can book independent bookstores.

[C]

Yes. I think I'm supposed to say Amazon and write a review, but, you know.

[A]

Well, you know what, buy it on bookshop.org but then write a nice review somewhere else.

[C]

Yeah. Write a nice review somewhere else. Yeah. You know, and I feel a little bit like Leonardo DiCaprio at Jeff Biscuit. Those Wedding with the Hat Down. I know.

[A]

You know, what they told me is it was this crazy thing where it's like you need high Amazon numbers and Barnes and Noble numbers to make some of these lists, but also if your Amazon numbers are too high, then it hurts you on the list. It was such a terrifying math to evaluate myself on that I checked out from all of it. How are you doing?

[C]

No, I know. Yeah. No, I've luckily. Luckily that kind of stuff don't. That don't just. Absolutely not just fly.

[A]

Yeah. I love that, Sarah.

[C]

I know.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Yes. That is so nice. Thank you so much for coming on.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

A big thank you to our senior managing producer, Christina Lopez, our executive producer, Jordan Moncada, our sound engineer, Marcus Hamm, and our amazing associate producer, Jaron Padre. I also want to give a huge thank you to our incredible partners over at Thrive Cosmetics and every replay we will link to those brands in the show notes. Go check them out. Everything else we discussed is also linked in the show notes. And if you have questions, thoughts, comments, go to the Patreon sign up. There's a free tier you can join. Leave a comment, chat with your fellow cookies. We will keep the book club continuing over there.