America's Next Top Model
While watching America’s Next Top Model earlier this week, I became fascinated and appalled with it. A show about young women competing for a top modeling career, America’s Next Top Model is promoting female self reliance, but in a patriarchal structure based upon an ideal perfection of their greatest asset, the body. Tyra Banks, world famous model, talk show host, and executive producer of the show, mentors these young women on how to make it in the modeling system; giving advice to achieve perfection, she helps build self-esteem and confidence in the girls before each shoot. But soon comes the humiliation in dissection of each girls shoot. I do not believe this humiliation is unnecessary or particularly bad. Each participant is striving to show her full worth for this job; they all knew what they would be in for. As stated in another blog, its like an extended job interview, and the critique is what helps to refine the girls’ skills. Mary Mendible states that one, “ Must know s/he is being humiliated and the perpetrator must be willfully exercising that power.� Tyra as a perpetrator is truly aiding these girls by humiliating them to promote progress, but its unfortunate that it is so harsh; or so it seems. The reality of these RTV shows is not necessarily all that goes on behind the scenes. It is pretty well known that hundreds of hours of footage are taken, and only a fraction are selected to be shown, but this is what makes it interesting for the viewer. The writers and producers of the show tweak the footage to create an engaging drama that will bring in the money. The camera angles, lighting and timeline of final piece are very constructed, giving the viewer a very unreal reflection of the true reality of these girls lives. They are constantly bombarded with cameras (made up of male gazes), exposed to harsh instigated drama between the participants (intended destruction of others) and striving for the title of the ideal beauty(which is all a matter of perspective). “The film image,� as McCabe states, seeks, “to naturalise what is only a projection of patriarchal ideology.� These girls are submitting themselves to the undervaluation of women in order to succeed. Many are forced to give up their morals in order to win the competition based on patriarchal ideology, an ideology in which they will never be the permanent best.