What does it mean when the person who built the door is also the one controlling who walks through it? Netflix's Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model pulls back the curtain on two decades of harm styled as opportunity—and Shannon and Tashmica are not letting Tyra off the hook.

This docuseries revisits the 2003–2018 run of America's Next Top Model through interviews with Tyra Banks, co-hosts Miss J, J. Manuel, and Nigel Barker, and several former contestants candidly telling their stories.

Tyra's current legacy project is hot ice cream. Which is, technically, incomplete ice cream. Tashmica has notes.

Shandy is a cycle two contestant whose sexual assault—filmed by the crew while she was too intoxicated to consent—was edited and broadcast as a cheating scandal.

Tyra Banks is the creator, executive producer, and subject of this documentary—a woman whose access to power has not translated into accountability, solidarity with Black women, or care for the people she claims to have uplifted.

And the industry is doing what it always does: making the person who was harmed responsible for the story.

What we keep coming back to:

Shandy's story is an example of how the production team transformed an assault into a scandal—in real time, before she even understood what had happened to her
The "diversity" Tyra built was a pinprick, not a door—and the show's own alumni confirm their careers were hurt, not helped, by being on it
What Bachelor in Paradise did differently in 2017 shows exactly what it looks like to prioritize people over timelines—and how rare that actually is

Leaving us with: when someone uses their power to control who else gets in—and whose stories get told—are they opening the door, or are they the lock?

Content note: Sexual violence, anti-Black racism and colorism, disordered eating, dental coercion, stroke and disability discussed.

Pop Culture Homework

Watch: Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model (Netflix)

Hosts: Tashmica Torok & Shannon Perez-Darby

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Sponsored by: The Accountable Communities Consortium and Aletheia Coaching & Consulting

Transcript available on Apple Podcasts