This piece is linked to my previous commentary about Tyra’s role in ANTM. Read it here.

The Cult of Size Zero

The early 2000s treated thinness as virtue.

This was the era of the cult of size zero. Heroin chic, that was so prominent in the 90s, resurfaced. Visible bone became aesthetic shorthand for discipline. Hunger was a symbol of ambition.

Kate Moss’s quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” circulated with ease. It appeared in magazines, on early social media, in bedrooms where teenagers were still deciding who they were.

Kate Winslet was called fat during Titanic. 

Britney Spears performed high-intensity choreography at the VMAs and still faced headlines dissecting her stomach the next morning.

Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were both visibly tiny. Nicole was branded the “fat one.”

I was a pretty average teenager, but I was taller than some of my peers so had to get the next size up to fit. Looking back on pictures, I was healthy, normal teenager. At the time, I was convinced I was fat.

Mainstream Diet Culture

Magazines at the time were, wisely, pushing eating healthy and being happy in your own body (albeit with a lot of fake tan). I remember an Elle Girl magazine that ran a piece warning about Mia and Ana websites which were flourishing. Eating disorders were aestheticised and organised. Girls shared “thinspiration,” calorie limits, punishment rituals.

Against that backdrop, America’s Next Top Model functioned as a televised extension of the same logic.

America’s Next Top Model and the Policing of Bodies

Janice Dickinson was blunt. She said contestants were “fat.” She told Giselle at eighteen that she had a “wide ass” (spoiler, she didn’t). Weight was treated as a deficiency. Body size was discussed with blunt cruelty and explained away as industry realism. It was almost like calling someone fat was helpful?

The message was consistent: your body is to be presented in a certain way at all times.

Keenyah Hill’s experience in ANTM Cycle 4 typifies this.

Keenyah Hill Deserved Protection

Her weight became storyline. Editing emphasised her eating (the edit showed her eating the same bagel 3 times to make it look like she was eating lots). Judges commented on her body repeatedly. During a photoshoot, a male model repeatedly touched her and made her visibly uncomfortable. When she objected, she was told to “work with it.” Nigel Barker described the behaviour as something common in the fashion industry. Tyra framed the situation as an opportunity for Keenyah to assert herself professionally. Not to condone physical violence, but the male model needed a good slap.

What Keenyah needed in that moment was protection. Instead, the discomfort became content. Disgusting.

That was the culture. Girls’ bodies were open for commentary. Girls’ boundaries were negotiable. 

Professionalism meant endurance.

We Were Watching and Learning

Watching this as a teenager, there was a degree of internalised misogyny against other women. “Ugh, that girl just wanted attention. Clearly she’s showing off boys like her.” It wasn’t encouraged that we sympathise with these girls, they were our enemies. It took into my 20s to shrug off this ridiculous notion.

The show’s recent documentary gestures toward context. It reminds viewers that the industry was narrow and unforgiving. It suggests that the early 2000s operated under different norms.

Context may explain the climate of the 2000s but it does not erase impact.

When body shaming is explained away as preparation for the real world, young viewers learn that criticism is character-building. When discomfort is televised as opportunity, viewers learn that silence equals strength.

Teenage girls, including myself, were absorbing this in real time.

Some of the ANTM contestants were only three or four years older than we the audience. Viewers were invited to evaluate them; critique their proportions and assess their marketability (as if we knew what we were on about?). That training did not stop when the episode ended.

Quick Instagram break. Follow me for these vibes:

I was 21 and size 12 when I went on weight watchers the first time. Excuse my French- wtf? The 2000s diet culture had permeated my actions so much that even at peak normal and entirely healthy body sizes I wanted to ‘be smaller’. That’s not OK.

Accountability Means More Than Context

The documentary reflects on spectacle and regret. Ken Mok uses the R word at times. However, it is less direct about the generational consequences of relentless body commentary delivered as mentorship.

There is a difference between acknowledging that standards were narrow and acknowledging that those standards harmed young women who were still forming their sense of self.

That distinction matters.

Because the impact was not abstract. I lived it. I’m still not sure I’ve properly shifted the inner voices.

We learned to monitor ourselves. To narrate our bodies from the outside. To believe shrinking equaled progress.

Now I am a parent.

The idea that my children could grow up in a culture that equates hunger with ambition and thinness with virtue disgusts me. It is infuriating. I will not teach them that it is ok to judge their bodies so harshly.

I do not accept “that was the time” as closure.

Young women were publicly dissected on ANTM for ratings. Teenage viewers were trained to internalise it. The documentary stops short of naming that plainly. It had a big shot to do so and it failed us.

Keenyah deserved protection.

Those girls deserved protection.

We deserved better than to learn self-worth from judging panels.

And accountability requires more than context.

Thanks for reading. For more essays and millennial content, check the links below.