Learn Something from This!” Mary Thompson

This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Santa Barbara] On: 13 September 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 918976320] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Feminist Media Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713700978 “Learn Something from This!” Mary Thompson Online publication date: 05 August 2010 To cite this Article Thompson, Mary(2010) '“Learn Something from This!”', Feminist Media Studies, 10: 3, 335 — 352 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2010.493656 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2010.493656 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. “LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS!” The problem of optional ethnicity on America’s Next Top Model Mary Thompson America’ s Next Top Model (ANTM), the popular reality television show produced by and starring Tyra Banks, has garnered a sizeable audience over its thirteen seasons. Synergistically marketed to readers of Young People and Teen Magazine, ANTM enjoys an audience of five million viewers mostly from the 18–35 year-old female demographic. This essay explores representations of ethnic and gendered identities constructed through the visual and discursive rhetoric of ANTM. ANTM judges define “model” femininity as those contestants whose look is “a blank palette” or “androgynous,” descriptors that signal unmarked whiteness, while nonwhite women are most often marked as “exotic” or eliminated for being “too ethnic.” This essay argues that despite Banks’s expressed desire to help more women of color into the modeling business, ANTM participates in emerging, neoliberal understandings of racial and gendered identities, which, characterized by a hegemonic postfeminist and postrace worldview, obscure the operating of privilege in the young women’s “choices” of how and when to perform their ethnicities. Rejecting the ANTM judges’ claims to objectivity, this essay attempts to situate the gaze of the fashion industry and its aesthetic knowledge through its unspoken reliance on the notion of “optional” ethnic identity. KEYWORDS reality television; postfeminism; optional ethnicity Today, planned authenticity is rife; as a product of hegemony and a remarkable counterpart of universal standardization, it constitutes an efficacious means of silencing the cry of racial oppression. We no longer wish to erase your difference. We demand, on the contrary, that you remember and assert it. At least, to a certain extent. (Trinh T. Minh-Ha [1987] 2003, p. 158) Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Barbara] At: 21:01 13 September 2010 Introduction America’ s Next Top Model (ANTM), the popular reality television show produced by and starring Tyra Banks, has garnered a sizeable audience over its thirteen seasons. Synergistically marketed to readers of Young People and Teen Magazine, ANTM enjoys an audience of five million viewers mostly from the 18–35 year-old female demographic (Trebay 2005). This essay explores representations of ethnic and gendered identities Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2010 ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/10/030335-352 q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2010.493656 336 MARY THOMPSON constructed through the visual and discursive rhetoric of ANTM. The “model” femininity sought by the ANTM judges is defined by contestants whose look is a “blank palette” or “androgynous,” descriptors that signal unmarked whiteness, while nonwhite women are most often marked as “exotic” or eliminated for being “too ethnic.” This essay argues that despite Banks’s expressed desire to help more women of color into the modeling business, ANTM participates in emerging, neoliberal understandings of racial and gendered identities, which, characterized by a hegemonic postfeminist and postrace worldview, obscure the operating of privilege in the young women’s “choices” of how and when to perform their ethnicities. Rejecting the ANTM judges’ claims to objectivity, this essay attempts to situate the gaze of the fashion industry and its aesthetic knowledge through its unspoken reliance on the notion of “optional” ethnic identity. America’s Next Top Model, Reality Television, and Neoliberalism Tyra Banks’s modeling career peaked in the late 1990s with covers on Sports Illustrated and GQ, making her the first black American women to achieve supermodel status. At the time, her appearance was considered novel and striking due to the contrast between her skin and lighter eye color, and she was touted as one of the first “voluptuous” models (contrasting with Kate Moss’s waif look), which led to her career as a lingerie model for Victoria’s Secret. Banks then created the charitable foundation, T Zone, as a summer camp for girls designed to address self-esteem. Now the successful creator of her own reality television and talk shows, Banks has garnered comparisons to Oprah, whom she identifies as one of her mentors, for her business savvy and self-promotion. Over the seasons on ANTM, Banks has stated her desire to help young women learn from her modeling experiences, including her search for self-confidence; The CW network’s America’s Next Top Model website notes, “After writing Tyra’s Beauty, published by HarperCollins, Banks realized that the trials she overcame as a teen could be used to connect with girls who struggle with self-esteem issues.” Part narrative of development, part contemporary retelling of the life of Madame CJ Walker, Banks’s (relative) rags-to-riches story is held up to ANTM contestants as their guide, and it works as the underlying archetypal storyline for the editing of the show; therefore, it’s worthwhile to inquire into this “model” narrative of development and its contradictory message about the importance of ethnic identity. Each season or “cycle” begins with a pool of model contestants, young women with no professional modeling experience, who audition and, allegedly, are handpicked by Banks herself. The models live together in customized lofts in urban American fashion Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Barbara] At: 21:01 13 September 2010 centers (such as New York and L.A.) before moving in the second half of the show to overseas locations (which, in previous seasons, have included France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, South Africa, and Australia) for an international perspective on the fashion industry. Over the twelve-week seasons, while being mentored by Banks, the women compete in various “modeling challenges” for the grand prizes of a contract with Cover Girl (with whom Banks modeled for five years) and photo spreads in mainstream fashion magazines. Competitions involve some aspect of the industry—runway walking, “go-sees” (the modeling equivalent of a job interview), makeovers, press interviews, and photo or video shoots—and often reproduce a situation or photo shoot from Banks’s own modeling experience. Each episode concludes with a judging session, during which Banks and her fashion “experts” (regulars have included former models Janice Dickinson and Twiggy) deliver capricious yet withering commentary on each model’s performance, photos, and, importantly, development. “LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS!” 337 Ultimately at the conclusion of each episode, one woman is eliminated, usually for reasons that remain unclear both to viewers and the remaining women, but which inevitably seem to have little to do with the woman’s appearance and allegedly everything to do with her potential for the business: model perfection is a moving target at which the contestants must continually and humiliatingly hurtle themselves each week. Although reality television shows claim verisimilitude through the absence of scripts, the use of nonactors, and borrowed conventions of nonfiction documentary, they are in fact highly crafted texts.1 Despite its generic label as “reality television,” ANTM follows a carefully edited, conventional narrative arc of formation (Feng 1997), modeled on Banks’s own life. Elements of the show draw from Banks’s narrated memories of breaking into the modeling business as a young woman of color, traveling overseas by herself to Europe, seeking mentors, and gaining self-knowledge and confidence amidst the cutthroat competition of the modeling business, which, Banks indicates, was not particularly open to women of color. Contestants on ANTM are, like Banks, young women, traveling to unfamiliar cities far from home, becoming apprentices and seeking mentors, facing daunting challenges, and learning something about themselves, thus enabling a passage into the

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