Speaker 1: Hi, Curse Up listeners, I know you miss me on
Speaker 1: your feed. Don't worry. We're working on an all new
Speaker 1: season of Curse Of coming out later this year. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you can't stop thinking about the shocking
Speaker 1: stories you heard about America's Next Top Model, you'll definitely
Speaker 1: want to check out our new docuseries from E Dirty
Speaker 1: Rotten Scandals. In the series, you'll hear from the America's
Speaker 1: Next Top Model participants you heard from on Curse Of,
Speaker 1: and a few you didn't like former A and TM
Speaker 1: judge Janis Dickinson. Dirty Rotten Scandals unveils the dark underbelly
Speaker 1: of the long running TV series through the untold stories
Speaker 1: of former contestants, and shows what happens when a golden
Speaker 1: opportunity for aspiring models unravels into a harrowing saga of exploitation,
Speaker 1: shattered dreams, and resilience. You can find the two part
Speaker 1: docuseries Dirty Rotten Scandals America's Next Top Model on E Network.
Speaker 1: Check your local TV provider schedule. Now, if y'all know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't just leave you high and dry like that.
Speaker 1: Want to beyond some? You want to beyond some want
Speaker 1: to be on the show Welcome to the Curse of
Speaker 1: America's Next Top Model, the bonus episode. First, let me
Speaker 1: say thank you for listening to the season. The response
Speaker 1: has been great and a little overwhelming. When my team
Speaker 1: and I started researching and reporting, we had to make
Speaker 1: some difficult decisions about what to include in the ten
Speaker 1: episode season and what to leave on the cutting room floor.
Speaker 1: That's one of the hardest things about this job. My
Speaker 1: interviews to the show usually went on for hours. As
Speaker 1: you can imagine, we heard a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: didn't neatly fit into the season arc we decided on
Speaker 1: like the cringey origins of reality TV.
Speaker 2: When we talked about ethics and reality TV even back
Speaker 2: in the fifties, we were doing some pretty suspect things.
Speaker 1: And of course there were more behind the scenes details
Speaker 1: from the models that couldn't fit into the season. Some
Speaker 1: of it was downright weird. I heard a lot about
Speaker 1: stuff that happened on set that made me realize what
Speaker 1: a strange world reality TV production really is. All season long,
Speaker 1: we talked about how producers created the stories we saw
Speaker 1: play out on A and TM. Casting producers find and
Speaker 1: create characters, show producers, stirrup drama and manufacture storylines. Creative
Speaker 1: producers craft over the top photoshoots and runways, and a
Speaker 1: surprising number of contestants willingly sign up for it all. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, there are some who walk off set and
Speaker 1: others who ask to be eliminated, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: a Tom got ten to fourteen contestants to stay through
Speaker 1: the humiliation for twenty four seasons. People stuck it out
Speaker 1: because they wanted the title and the prom others just
Speaker 1: wanted the exposure. But still it's actually impressive. I mean
Speaker 1: in a dark way that producers got contestants to cooperate
Speaker 1: with all this. This's equip I hear a lot from
Speaker 1: people who criticize the models for coming forward today to
Speaker 1: talk about their negative experiences on the show.
Speaker 3: These were not miners. There were grown ups who knew
Speaker 3: what they were getting into. And if you hated it
Speaker 3: that much, you could have quit, you could have stopped.
Speaker 1: That was Perez Hilton standing in for the popular opinion.
Speaker 1: There's a belief that if the models didn't like it,
Speaker 1: they could just leave, But I don't think it's quite
Speaker 1: that simple. From the moment you walk on set as
Speaker 1: a reality show participant, you have to suspend your understanding
Speaker 1: of how the world in normal human interaction works. Reality
Speaker 1: shows like A and TM are successful because the contestants' trust,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, the version of reality the show
Speaker 1: is create. In order to maintain that reality, producers have
Speaker 1: to get to contestants to do what they say. Sarah Harttthorn,
Speaker 1: who competed on Cycle nine, told me how A and
Speaker 1: TM achieved this power dynamic and what she compared it
Speaker 1: to surprised me.
Speaker 4: I think it's difficult to convey the power dynamic to
Speaker 4: someone who hasn't been in it. But the closest comparison
Speaker 4: really is a cult. Sarah explained this using her own
Speaker 4: cult ranking system. So the People's Temple aka Jonestown, you know,
Speaker 4: the ones who drank the kool aid, that's a level ten.
Speaker 4: Fitness programs like Soul Cycle or CrossFit with cult like
Speaker 4: followings are a level one.
Speaker 1: Lots of people follow level one cults. Even dedicated fandoms
Speaker 1: are level one cults. I'm a Beyonce devote. Sarah wrote
Speaker 1: a book about her experience as a contestant on A
Speaker 1: and TM. When she started her research, she saw some
Speaker 1: parallels between A and TM and at first, she felt
Speaker 1: like being a contestant on the show was a level
Speaker 1: two or three. Now, after writing the book, Sarah thinks
Speaker 1: the show's actually closer to a five or six.
Speaker 4: It takes young girls, and it uses our labor, It
Speaker 4: does not pay us, and then it spits us out
Speaker 4: really poor and ill equipped to deal with the after effects.
Speaker 1: Here's a list of parallels Sarah saw between A and
Speaker 1: TM and colts. Isolation from everyone you know and love.
Speaker 1: Check a figurehead or leader the followers can believe in.
Speaker 1: Check a group of people who are in charge and
Speaker 1: do the leader's bidding. Check a group of followers who
Speaker 1: are willing to do whatever is asked of them. Check,
Speaker 1: and a prize or reward at the end to make
Speaker 1: up for all the followers suffering. Also check. Sarah says
Speaker 1: A and TM even use coersive tactics on the contestants,
Speaker 1: some of the same ones cults have been known to use,
Speaker 1: like language parroting.
Speaker 4: They would repeat the same words and phrases to us
Speaker 4: over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Sarah told me that during the casting process, she and
Speaker 1: the other finalists were kept in a small conference room
Speaker 1: for hours.
Speaker 4: They were prepping us, and we spent hours just sitting
Speaker 4: in these conference rooms with lawyers and producers talking at
Speaker 4: us for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 4: They used mind control tactics.
Speaker 1: The lawyers and producers repeatedly told contestants that if they
Speaker 1: ever violated their contracts.
Speaker 4: We will dock your wages for the rest of your life.
Speaker 4: That's the phrase that they said, over and over, we
Speaker 4: will dock your wages for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Sarah said it felt like producers were trying to drill
Speaker 1: the message into their heads, and that wasn't the only thing.
Speaker 1: From the start. Producers wanted the contestants to feel disposable
Speaker 1: and replaceable. The other mantra they would repeat.
Speaker 4: There are a million girls that want this opportunity, and
Speaker 4: we have their phone number. They probably said that to
Speaker 4: us hundreds of times, different people setting it, and those
Speaker 4: phrases just got stuck in our head. There are a
Speaker 4: million girls that want this opportunity, and they have their
Speaker 4: phone number.
Speaker 1: While it was probably true, the statement served a larger purpose.
Speaker 1: It made the contestants more cooperative. They knew if they
Speaker 1: didn't do what the producer said, there would be someone
Speaker 1: waiting in the wings to take their place. Once producers
Speaker 1: established that power dynamic. They could get contestants to follow
Speaker 1: rules they wouldn't normally agree to.
Speaker 4: They removed our ability to have any agency right. They
Speaker 4: controlled when we could eat, when we could go to
Speaker 4: the bathroom. Like I still remember the first time I
Speaker 4: said can I go to the bathroom? And they said no.
Speaker 4: That's a very jarring thing to hear, Like that's a
Speaker 4: script that humans have, right, You say, can I use
Speaker 4: the restroom? Someone says, oh, yes, of course.
Speaker 1: That's like a back and forth.
Speaker 4: It's like a given. It's like a social norm. And
Speaker 4: that was removed. When we said can I go to
Speaker 4: the bathroom? We didn't know what the answer would be.
Speaker 1: While reporting this podcast, I learned A ANDTM and shows
Speaker 1: like it have pretty strict rules contestants have to follow.
Speaker 1: If so producers can control what's happening on set. They
Speaker 1: didn't want the models just wandering around while they were taping.
Speaker 1: Another rule I heard about might seem counterintuitive. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: models couldn't even talk to each other. Let's say they
Speaker 1: were waiting to start a photoshoot or a judging panel.
Speaker 1: Maybe the location wasn't ready or tyro wasn't there yet.
Speaker 1: The models couldn't pass the time by just chatting with
Speaker 1: each other. They had to be on Ice hair Cycle
Speaker 1: four and seventeen contestant Lisa Dematto, Ice is being silent.
Speaker 2: You can't even talk to each other, so I'm not
Speaker 2: allowed to talk.
Speaker 1: The whole point of a reality show is to get
Speaker 1: everything on camera. Producers didn't want to risk missing juicy moments.
Speaker 1: They also didn't want the contestantspply behind their backs. Producers
Speaker 1: didn't just draw the line at talking with each other.
Speaker 1: There was a no socializing rule between contestants and crew members.
Speaker 1: Even though the camera operators and sound engineers were in
Speaker 1: their faces every day, the models weren't supposed to even
Speaker 1: say hello or how you doing. Producers wanted the models
Speaker 1: to behave as though the cameras weren't there, so they
Speaker 1: literally told them to ignore the people behind them, although
Speaker 1: one crew member told me that rule eventually went out
Speaker 1: the window a few seasons in because it was too
Speaker 1: hard to enforce even though you're surrounded by people. With
Speaker 1: these rules, you can see why so many contestants say
Speaker 1: being on a reality show is actually a pretty isolating experience,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't just on A and TM. Here's reality
Speaker 1: TV psychologist doctor Stephen Stein. He's worked on shows like
Speaker 1: Survivor and Big Brother.
Speaker 5: Some shows are really restrictive. Like a show like Big Brother,
Speaker 5: the only people they can talk to would be one
Speaker 5: person in production when they're in the diary room, and
Speaker 5: then myself and that's it.
Speaker 1: We see contestants on A and TM talking on the
Speaker 1: phone to their loved ones back home, but those calls
Speaker 1: are usually scheduled and very brief. On some reality shows,
Speaker 1: you can't even talk to your loved ones. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's getting a little more culty. Removing objective reality is
Speaker 1: a foundational part of brainwashing. Also from a production standpoint,
Speaker 1: they didn't want their cast to be distracted with personal
Speaker 1: updates and breaking news. They want the set and the
Speaker 1: house they're filming in to be their entire world for
Speaker 1: the weeks and months they were in production. But the
Speaker 1: outside world doesn't stop and sometimes it trumps the reality
Speaker 1: that's being created by the show. Doctor Stein remembers the
Speaker 1: time when he had to burst the reality TV bubble
Speaker 1: with some big news from the outside world.
Speaker 5: I think my worst situation was COVID. I had to
Speaker 5: empty entire house a Big Brother Canada when COVID happened,
Speaker 5: the city forced everything to close down, and everyone's dream
Speaker 5: sort of fell apart, and I had to deal with
Speaker 5: each contestant, each house guests coming out.
Speaker 1: Booming had started right before the COVID nineteen crisis. The
Speaker 1: cast had no clue what was going on. They'd been
Speaker 1: completely isolated, and now they had to abruptly leave and
Speaker 1: go back into this world that was all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: very different.
Speaker 5: So I had to tell them there's something that's happened.
Speaker 5: The world has kind of changed from what it was
Speaker 5: like when you went into the house and just go
Speaker 5: through what some of these changes are, and it's going
Speaker 5: to affect you, and you're gonna have to go right
Speaker 5: home and you're gonna have to isolate And no, they
Speaker 5: were shocked. They couldn't believe that we're telling them. It's like, like, what.
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. The Big Brother contestants were in such
Speaker 1: a controlled environment already that when Doctor Stein delivered the
Speaker 1: news about the COVID lockdown, they didn't believe him.
Speaker 5: They're like, is this a joke? Is this part of
Speaker 5: the show.
Speaker 1: Big Brother had so thoroughly conditioned the cast that they
Speaker 1: were initially unsure if the pandemic was even real or
Speaker 1: part of the production. To me, that says a lot
Speaker 1: about how much of a mind fuck being on reality
Speaker 1: TV can be. Sarah Hartthorn compared A and TM to
Speaker 1: being in a cult, and Sarah's not the only one
Speaker 1: who said something about mind controlled and reality TV. Several
Speaker 1: people I've interviewed for this podcast compared reality television and
Speaker 1: more specifically A and TM to psychological experiments. Here's Lisa Dematto.
Speaker 6: It is literally a show about how to survive.
Speaker 2: The Stanford Prison Experiment like psychological warfare.
Speaker 1: The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychological study done in
Speaker 1: the seventies at Stanford University. Researchers were interested in looking
Speaker 1: at obedience, power, and control. Here's doctor Stein explaining the experiment.
Speaker 5: It stemmed from the Nazis in Germany. Like. The question
Speaker 5: was were the people who orchestrated the Holocaust? Were they
Speaker 5: inherently evil and bad? Or could anybody be bad and
Speaker 5: evil in the right circumstances. That's what he intended to
Speaker 5: look at, which was a really good question. Were they
Speaker 5: evil people who were doing all this stuff? Or were
Speaker 5: they ordinary people who just did bad things.
Speaker 1: The Stanford prison experiment is infamous for two reasons, first
Speaker 1: because of how unethically it was conducted, and second because
Speaker 1: of what it revealed. The lead researcher, doctor Phillips Embardo,
Speaker 1: took a group of twenty four college age men, paid
Speaker 1: them fifteen dollars a day, and randomly assigned them to
Speaker 1: two groups. The first group were the prisoners. They went
Speaker 1: through a mock arrest by real police. Then they were
Speaker 1: sent to a makeshift prison in the basement of a
Speaker 1: building on campus. They were searched, given a prisoner number,
Speaker 1: a uniform, and led into sales. The second group, the guards,
Speaker 1: were given fancy uniforms, including mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact.
Speaker 1: The guards received the simple instruction to keep the prisoners
Speaker 1: in line without physically abusing them. Needless to say, all
Speaker 1: hell broke loose. What they learned was that given the chance,
Speaker 1: in the right circumstances, humans will be trash.
Speaker 7: Please welcome, doctor Philip Zimbardo.
Speaker 8: What did your experiment prove?
Speaker 1: Evil behavior?
Speaker 3: Can be listed in the Best of Us.
Speaker 1: The study was supposed to go on for two weeks,
Speaker 1: but after six days they had to pull the pug.
Speaker 5: Phil Bombardo just sort of threw it out there and
Speaker 5: let it happen, and by goodness, those bad people got
Speaker 5: really bad. There was physical altercations, the prisoners took on
Speaker 5: the role of prisoners like they fought back like prisoners would,
Speaker 5: and the guards were mean, an awful, an authoritarian like
Speaker 5: guards would be. And again, these were ordinary people who
Speaker 5: were randomly assigned.
Speaker 1: Now, saying A and TM is like the Stanford prison
Speaker 1: experiment can be a little extreme. But as I looked
Speaker 1: into the history, I learned that the comparison between reality
Speaker 1: TV and psychological experiments isn't that much of a leap.
Speaker 1: Hannah cat Jones was a contestant on cycle sixteen. She
Speaker 1: told me about two situations that happened on her season
Speaker 1: that I didn't know what to make of. Producers could
Speaker 1: argue that certain photo shoots and challenges were a test
Speaker 1: of the contestant's talent or their ability to perform under pressure,
Speaker 1: but the situations Hannah told me about were seemingly designed
Speaker 1: solely to fuck with the contestants and see how they
Speaker 1: would react. One of those moments happened before the season
Speaker 1: even kicked off.
Speaker 6: This is the final round where the show officially begins.
Speaker 6: Mister and Missus Jay walk up and they're like, okay, ladies.
Speaker 6: The girls who have their pictures in these envelopes are
Speaker 6: the ones going into the house, and the girls who
Speaker 6: don't have their pictures in the envelope are going home.
Speaker 6: Each person is their envelope and they're like, okay, Betty one,
Speaker 6: two three, and I pull out a blank piece of paper.
Speaker 9: And I'm like.
Speaker 1: It's over. That crushed me. Then the contestants were separated.
Speaker 1: Hannah's group, the ones with no pictures in their envelopes,
Speaker 1: were sent up the elevator to a room, presumably to
Speaker 1: get their bags and go home.
Speaker 6: We're like picking up our suitcases, and then Tyra Banks
Speaker 6: starts walking down this staircase and she's like looking down
Speaker 6: at us, Hi.
Speaker 1: Ladies, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 8: Okay, but you guys can't give up, right, no, right,
Speaker 8: This is like you guys got really far.
Speaker 6: The tears keep coming and you're trying to hold them back,
Speaker 6: and you can't hold them back anymore because she's coming
Speaker 6: to say goodbye.
Speaker 8: This is it.
Speaker 2: I've gotten like so turned down.
Speaker 8: The door slammed in my face.
Speaker 2: The road to success and to the top is not
Speaker 2: a straight line. It's a zigzag line.
Speaker 8: So unfortunately, you guys have to go home now, but
Speaker 8: you don't have to go far.
Speaker 2: Because you're.
Speaker 6: And she pressed a button and there was like drapes
Speaker 6: that I hadn't really noticed around the stairwell. So then
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, these drapes fall and we're in
Speaker 6: like a penthouse apartment with like pictures of ourselves and
Speaker 6: toys and candy, and like we're all like it's like
Speaker 6: the silence, like what's going on? And she's like, you're
Speaker 6: on this show, and we all just start like jumping
Speaker 6: up and down.
Speaker 2: We're like, some of us are crying again.
Speaker 1: Some of the girls were literally falling on the ground.
Speaker 1: And punped was popular at the time. Tyra referenced it
Speaker 1: on this episode. This little stunt was her sick nod
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 6: And that was like the first night. The next day
Speaker 6: they're like, okay, we're gonna start filming.
Speaker 1: But remember there was another group of girls who had
Speaker 1: gotten pictures in their envelopes. They thought they made it
Speaker 1: onto the show, but they were actually getting sent home.
Speaker 1: We didn't see A and TM break that news to them.
Speaker 6: The girls that didn't get on the show, like that's
Speaker 6: way worse for them. Psychologically. I would have trust issues
Speaker 6: for a really long time after that, because I remember
Speaker 6: running into one of the girls like a year later
Speaker 6: that had been in the group that thought they were
Speaker 6: on the show first, and she said that they sat
Speaker 6: in a bus for hours and then somebody came on
Speaker 6: the bus and said that was all for show. You're
Speaker 6: going home tomorrow, and Tyra Biggs did not say bye.
Speaker 1: I asked Hannah why she thinks A and TM did that, Like,
Speaker 1: what was the point of setting these girls up just
Speaker 1: for the three minute payoff of saying hah, we gotcha.
Speaker 6: I think at that point they really just loved like
Speaker 6: the shock value of things, Like they realized that it
Speaker 6: was a great formula for the audience too to be
Speaker 6: surprised that this happened to them.
Speaker 1: I think they also did it to put their test
Speaker 1: subjects on edge, to make them feel like they never
Speaker 1: knew what to expect. Unpredictability can cause anxiety, and anxiety
Speaker 1: can cause people to act out. Hannah told me after
Speaker 1: the casting prank she didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 6: It was just such a strange couple of months, and like, honestly,
Speaker 6: anytime that we walked into a room after that, point,
Speaker 6: it felt like the floor was going to fall beneath us.
Speaker 1: Her feelings were justified. On Hannah Season cycle sixteen, A
Speaker 1: and TM really leaned into the psychological experiment thing. There
Speaker 1: was one more incident Hannah told me about that was
Speaker 1: so bad it didn't even air on the show. On
Speaker 1: her season, Hannah made it to the international trip to Morocco.
Speaker 1: She was one of the final three. While there, they
Speaker 1: had a challenge where the contestants interviewed locals about beauty products,
Speaker 1: except the people they were interviewing didn't speak English and
Speaker 1: Hannah didn't speak the local language. She lost the challenge,
Speaker 1: but instead of just awarding the winner a prize, A
Speaker 1: and TM decided to also punish the two losers just
Speaker 1: a heads up. The punishment was nasty, even by top
Speaker 1: model standards, and it certainly didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with modeling. When the challenge was over, Hannah and the
Speaker 1: other losing contestant were led to a table on the
Speaker 1: street with a tarp over it.
Speaker 6: Somebody from production pulled off the tarp and it has
Speaker 6: a cow's head that's severed and its tongue is hanging out,
Speaker 6: and that's just like one of the pieces of animal carcass.
Speaker 6: It's on the table. There's like organs, and there's like
Speaker 6: a goat's foot, and there's just like all these different
Speaker 6: like pieces of meat. And he said, you're going to
Speaker 6: pick up these animal pieces and you're gonna put them
Speaker 6: on the wagon that's attashed his donkey, and you're gonna
Speaker 6: pull his donkey down.
Speaker 2: The road to the butcher shot.
Speaker 6: So Brittany and I have to team up to pick
Speaker 6: up the cow's head. That's how heavy it was, and
Speaker 6: we're both like gagging, like, you know, because it's not
Speaker 6: like fresh, it's like griss. And we finally get all
Speaker 6: the pieces onto.
Speaker 1: The wagon and it got worth.
Speaker 6: As we're picking up the pieces and everything, the Moroccans
Speaker 6: are like around the table like watching us do this,
Speaker 6: and they're all like Moroccan men who are like ha
Speaker 6: ha ha. It felt like shame from Game of Arms,
Speaker 6: and they were like shame.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 6: It just felt so demeaning and like not fashion forward.
Speaker 1: At all, Hannah told me when she looks back at
Speaker 1: that moment, she regrets not telling the producers no. But
Speaker 1: that's the thing about the great psychological experiment that is
Speaker 1: reality TV. It's designed to push you to do stuff that,
Speaker 1: under normal circumstances you'd never do.
Speaker 6: I felt like that was a little piece of my
Speaker 6: soul like kind of went in that meat lock or
Speaker 6: two as far as like not putting my foot down
Speaker 6: and saying no instead, I was like, Okay, I'll do
Speaker 6: this for the sake of the show, because if I
Speaker 6: do this, then maybe I could win the show. And
Speaker 6: I felt like it was like just a really messed
Speaker 6: up way for production and people who were writing those
Speaker 6: pieces to just exercise their control and to kind of
Speaker 6: laugh at us.
Speaker 1: A and TM found makes their hose. A Taurus told
Speaker 1: me that he and other crew members were aware of
Speaker 1: this dynamic too.
Speaker 10: You signed on to live in this bubble. The microscopes
Speaker 10: are going to be on immediately. We're going to dissect
Speaker 10: every word that you say, every step that you take.
Speaker 10: I always thought the original concept for reality TV was
Speaker 10: to just observe and see how people react to different
Speaker 10: people in different circumstances, and you document that. But as
Speaker 10: time goes on, you amp up the stress level.
Speaker 1: It turns out sticking people in unnerving and uncomfortable situations
Speaker 1: to see how they react is the very cornerstone of
Speaker 1: reality programming.
Speaker 9: Here's the candid subject.
Speaker 11: Here comes the candid count of staff, three of them.
Speaker 12: At least.
Speaker 1: To really understand where America's next top model came from,
Speaker 1: we have to go back in time, way back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. That's where we're going after the break.
Speaker 1: A and TM premiered in two thousand and three, and
Speaker 1: let me tell y'all, what a time to be alive.
Speaker 1: There were the reality shows like The Osbournes and Laguna
Speaker 1: Beach that gave us a glimpse into the lives of
Speaker 1: the rich and famous to let us know there are
Speaker 1: truly nothing like us. And then there were the shows
Speaker 1: that were making dreams come true. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: be a singer but never got that big break, American
Speaker 1: Idol could make you a star. And if you wanted
Speaker 1: to know what it feels like to have twenty desperate
Speaker 1: debutantes fighting for your affection, you could go on The Bachelor.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to be a millionaire and you weren't
Speaker 1: good at trivia, you could voluntarily strand yourself on an
Speaker 1: island for weeks and play mind games with strangers on
Speaker 1: the Swan. Self proclaimed ugly people could get plastic surgery
Speaker 1: so that their inner beauty would finally be reflected outside.
Speaker 1: This is the landscape A ANDTM was born into. But
Speaker 1: reality TV didn't start in the early two thousands, and
Speaker 1: it definitely wasn't invented by Tyra Banks.
Speaker 2: My name is Amanda Ann Klein. I am professor of
Speaker 2: Film Studies at East Carolina University. I've also written a
Speaker 2: book called Millennials Killed the Video Star.
Speaker 1: Y'all know Amanda. She pretty much has my dream job.
Speaker 1: She's a reality TV historian and expert, and she's going
Speaker 1: to be our guide for this brief journey through reality programming.
Speaker 1: Reality based television wasn't really possible before the advent of
Speaker 1: handheld cameras, portable sound equipment, and fast film stop. But
Speaker 1: almost as soon as the tech was available, production studios
Speaker 1: decided to use it to make fools out of everyday
Speaker 1: people for our entertainment.
Speaker 2: So there was this post war belief that technology will
Speaker 2: allow us to uncover the secrets of kind of human
Speaker 2: behaviors that were not accessible prior to this technology.
Speaker 1: The first show to test out this theory was Candid Camera.
Speaker 1: You might remember iterations of it from the seventies, nineties,
Speaker 1: and early two thousands, but the show first premiered in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, Smile You were on Candid Camera.
Speaker 2: They were like many psychological experiments, and there would generally
Speaker 2: be a mark, so someone who didn't know that they
Speaker 2: were being recorded. That was key. And one of the
Speaker 2: more famous examples involves an elevator full of people who
Speaker 2: are all part of the production.
Speaker 11: The gentleman in the elevator now is a candid star.
Speaker 11: These folks who are entering, the man with a white shirt,
Speaker 11: the lady with a trench coat, and subsequently one other
Speaker 11: member of us there will face.
Speaker 2: The rear when the mark walks in. The person who
Speaker 2: doesn't know he's being recorded. The people in the elevator
Speaker 2: all turn at once to the left, and he looks around.
Speaker 2: He's a little confused, and then he turns.
Speaker 9: And you'll see how this man in the trench car,
Speaker 9: he tries to maintain his individuality.
Speaker 5: But a little by little.
Speaker 11: He looks at his watch, but he's really making an
Speaker 11: excuse for turning just a little bit more. A little
Speaker 11: all I would try it once again.
Speaker 2: Then they all turn to the back and he again
Speaker 2: is like, well damn okay, and he turns.
Speaker 1: And this goes on for a while, everyone in this
Speaker 1: elevator just randomly turning at the same time, and this
Speaker 1: poor guy following their lead. In nineteen forty eight, this
Speaker 1: was peak television. Audiences could watch real people experiencing seemingly
Speaker 1: real dilemmas and see how they would react punped before punped.
Speaker 1: But Candid Camera's hosts Alan Funt, wasn't just playing these
Speaker 1: practical jokes for shits and giggles. He was interested in
Speaker 1: something deeper.
Speaker 2: A lot of this has to do with post World
Speaker 2: War two culture and the sense of what makes group
Speaker 2: think happen. How could these atrocities of World War Two
Speaker 2: have happened to just normal, regular moral people.
Speaker 1: Remember what doctor Stein said about the Stanford prison experiment
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. Those researchers were also interested in
Speaker 1: what drove people to commit atrocities during World War Two.
Speaker 1: This guy Alan Funt was looking into it thirty years before,
Speaker 1: and he made it entertaining.
Speaker 2: So there was a lot of investigation into that in
Speaker 2: the world of psychology, and Alan Funt was very interested
Speaker 2: in that. As a result, Candid Camera was actually studied
Speaker 2: a lot in the sixties by psychologists, but.
Speaker 1: Not all reality programming was a deep psychological explorer. Some
Speaker 1: of it was a lot more reminiscent of contemporary reality TV,
Speaker 1: people laying their pain and trauma bear in front of
Speaker 1: audiences in the hopes of gaining fame, fortune, and in
Speaker 1: this case, nominal prizes.
Speaker 13: What you like to be Queen for to Day.
Speaker 2: Queen for a Day ran from the mid forties up
Speaker 2: through the mid sixties. First it was on radio, and
Speaker 2: then starting in nineteen fifty six, it goes on TV.
Speaker 1: When it comes to early reality TV shows, this one
Speaker 1: might be the most disturbing of all, and I think
Speaker 1: it tells us a lot about later prize based shows
Speaker 1: like Top Model.
Speaker 2: The premise of Queen for a Day is pretty wild.
Speaker 2: So women right into the show and they tell the
Speaker 2: producers about their sob story and it's pretty bad stuff.
Speaker 2: A woman whose son has holy and he's bedbound, so
Speaker 2: she wants a rolling bed so she can take him
Speaker 2: out into the sun. A woman who has a lot
Speaker 2: of children, she just wants wood so she can build
Speaker 2: bunk beds for them to sleep in. It's awful. So
Speaker 2: they pick four women and they're all seated in the audience.
Speaker 2: They come up, the host interviews them and at the
Speaker 2: end of the show, they place all the women on
Speaker 2: camera and the audience collapsed for the saddus story, and
Speaker 2: then the winner becomes queen for a day and they
Speaker 2: get the thing that they asked for.
Speaker 1: The show was shot in front of a studio audience,
Speaker 1: and these matronly women are escorted on stage by young
Speaker 1: models in mini dresses to meet this host who's honestly
Speaker 1: just over the top. Every episode is riddled with ads
Speaker 1: and sponsorship plugs, Like literally every five minutes they're trying
Speaker 1: to sell you some ran rap or jewelry or wash sauce.
Speaker 1: For some reason, this particular episode you're about to hear
Speaker 1: was sponsored by the egg industry, so all the contestants
Speaker 1: have something to do with eggs. The first woman works
Speaker 1: the night shift as an egg candler, which apparently is
Speaker 1: the person who takes the bad eggs off the conveyor
Speaker 1: belt before they're packaged.
Speaker 4: Well, all, my husband's been disabled for the last ten
Speaker 4: years and it's beIN up to me to make a living,
Speaker 4: and I've been very thankful that I've had a good
Speaker 4: job that I could.
Speaker 1: This woman went on the show because it was offering
Speaker 1: her something she couldn't afford. A set of adjustable stools
Speaker 1: so that she and her coworkers could sit more comfortably
Speaker 1: as they sort the eggs. These were mostly working white
Speaker 1: women at a time when only a quarter to a
Speaker 1: third of white women worked outside of their homes. This
Speaker 1: is also in an era of respectability politics, a time
Speaker 1: when you didn't air your dirty laundry, even to your neighbors.
Speaker 1: And these women are going on national television saying they're broke,
Speaker 1: and they're not doing it for fame. They're doing it
Speaker 1: because they've been promised the chance to win. You can
Speaker 1: even see it in the episode and hear it in
Speaker 1: their voices. They're nervous, uncomfortable, even like this next woman
Speaker 1: who ran a chicken farm with her husband. She had
Speaker 1: a pained, nervous look on her face. She's fidgeting, almost shaking.
Speaker 1: She doesn't even know how to answer the questions, how.
Speaker 3: Many kids you got three?
Speaker 12: How many chicken?
Speaker 1: About seven thousand?
Speaker 12: Holy boy? How many eggs did the chicken lay today?
Speaker 6: Ours?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 1: About three thousand? Right now?
Speaker 12: You didn't hear the question, I guess how many eggs
Speaker 12: does up chicken lay?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 12: If you got one to lady seven thousand, you and
Speaker 12: I can get.
Speaker 1: Pretty rich on the average one day.
Speaker 12: I think how many roasters per Lady Chicken.
Speaker 13: None, she's new in the egg business.
Speaker 1: There's no way this woman was on the show to
Speaker 1: be famous like reality TV contestants we see today. She
Speaker 1: was on Queen for a Day because she desperately wanted
Speaker 1: to get her son expensive gift. I would like to have,
Speaker 1: more than anything in the world, a record player for
Speaker 1: my boy. You just had open heart surgery in February.
Speaker 12: I was this little boy.
Speaker 1: Fifteen, he was fifteen Saturday.
Speaker 12: What's his name?
Speaker 1: Chesterirs, Old Chester? And it only gets more sad and desperate.
Speaker 1: Woman number three, whose husband was apparently a teacher, pastor
Speaker 1: and egg man, wanted an tercom so she could keep
Speaker 1: track of her five kids.
Speaker 10: I candle eggs and the egg room quite long, and
Speaker 10: I got to keep track of the children in the house.
Speaker 1: Sure, and it's quite a waste to run back and forth.
Speaker 1: And finally there was woman number four, who maybe had
Speaker 1: the most odd but sweet request.
Speaker 2: I like to have eighty moon moves.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 12: That scared me a little bit, and I too, you
Speaker 12: could use, but she wanted eighty And what a nice
Speaker 12: reason tell it. I have a daughter in Pacific State
Speaker 12: Hospital and they're going to have a blue owl this fall,
Speaker 12: and I wanted the moon moves the girls explain, if
Speaker 12: you don't mind, what is that school that your little
Speaker 12: daughter attends. It's a special school.
Speaker 1: It's a school for the pandicapped, and.
Speaker 12: They're going to have a luau. You want eighty little
Speaker 12: girls to go to this luau all dressed in moon moos.
Speaker 12: I can't think of a nicer thing for those kids.
Speaker 12: Now we're going to have.
Speaker 13: A queen right now, and here we go. Number one,
Speaker 13: missus Irma Franklin.
Speaker 12: Number one, Thank you.
Speaker 13: Number two, you want a phonograph of that boy?
Speaker 1: Number two. The crowd chose number four, the Moomoo lady,
Speaker 1: but the moon moves were not her only prize.
Speaker 13: And here's a good way to start with this handsome
Speaker 13: queen for a day watch by hell Bros. It was
Speaker 13: designed just for our queens and has two tiny diamond
Speaker 13: encrusted crowns adorning the face. Now, you put in a
Speaker 13: lot of work there, and I'm sure that the perfect
Speaker 13: way to relax the day's end will be a great
Speaker 13: comfort to you. It's with a jacuzzi whirlpool bat.
Speaker 1: She also got a canopy bed a gift certificate to
Speaker 1: shop in a catalog and you'll love this. The woman
Speaker 1: who ran an egg farm got a year's supply of eggs.
Speaker 2: What really makes the show so surreal is that not
Speaker 2: only does she get the price she asked for, but
Speaker 2: she gets all these sponsor gifts and they're completely inappropriate
Speaker 2: for the women that are going to witness. So it's
Speaker 2: like outfits for the country club. Every woman will look
Speaker 2: chic in this matching polyester tennis outfit. It's outrageous. There's
Speaker 2: this huge disconnect. So when we talk about ethics and
Speaker 2: reality TV, even back in the fifties, we were doing
Speaker 2: some pretty suspect things. This point, Amanda makes is the
Speaker 2: reason why we just listen to all of that, Other
Speaker 2: than I just wanted you to hear how ridiculous that
Speaker 2: show is. Almost from the beginning, when we decided to
Speaker 2: put real people on television to hear their real stories,
Speaker 2: the ethical life were blurred.
Speaker 1: These women were more than likely not rich. I mean,
Speaker 1: the first women couldn't even afford some stools. But producers
Speaker 1: understood that if they dangled the promise of something people
Speaker 1: couldn't otherwise get on their own, they would be willing
Speaker 1: to do stuff they wouldn't normally do. It's something we
Speaker 1: saw all the time on A and TM. Queen for
Speaker 1: a Day is an early example of how desperation became entertainment.
Speaker 1: By the time Tyra Banks and Kim Mock came along,
Speaker 1: they intuitively understood that the most desperate people make the
Speaker 1: best contestants. For a long time, Candid Camera, Queen for
Speaker 1: a Day in game shows were really the only type
Speaker 1: of reality television programming. That is until the mother of
Speaker 1: reality TV as we know it premiered in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies on PBS, of all places.
Speaker 7: During the next hour, you will see the first in
Speaker 7: a series of programs in time, An American Family.
Speaker 2: An American Family comes out in nineteen seventy three. It
Speaker 2: is a PBS show and it is what we would
Speaker 2: consider the first serialized form of reality TV. What made
Speaker 2: An American Family different is that it told a story,
Speaker 2: a continuous story across episodes.
Speaker 7: The series is about the William C. Loud family of
Speaker 7: Santa Barbara, California. For seven months from May thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 7: seventy one to January first, nineteen seventy two, the family
Speaker 7: was filmed as they went about their daily routine.
Speaker 1: An American family doesn't sound like the reality TV we
Speaker 1: watched today. It just sounds like a really mundane documentary
Speaker 1: about the day to day lives of a typical family.
Speaker 1: But when you think about it, being there to capture
Speaker 1: the day to day life while happening to catch the
Speaker 1: truly unhanged drama is the base of all docusob reality.
Speaker 1: Think about the Kardashians, or the Real Housewives or Jersey Shore.
Speaker 1: An American family pioneered the whole genre. Half of Antium
Speaker 1: was the plot of the modeling competition, but the other
Speaker 1: half was about the drama in the house. You know,
Speaker 1: who'll stole my granola bar? An American family was the
Speaker 1: earliest example of this type of reality TV.
Speaker 2: It's the first time people said, come into my house,
Speaker 2: come into my life. You're inviting the camera in, which
Speaker 2: is a very different relationship with the camera. I teach
Speaker 2: it in my reality TV class, and one thing that
Speaker 2: I find interesting is how the students get frustrated with
Speaker 2: the downtime because we're so used to reality shows kind
Speaker 2: of you know, give us this, give us that, give
Speaker 2: us the reaction, whereas this was more in kind of
Speaker 2: the direct cinema documentary tradition where you might just see
Speaker 2: someone you know, their finger, I mean, on the table
Speaker 2: for a while as a boring conversation happens.
Speaker 6: Oh, just you know, a bunch of kids, Kevin.
Speaker 7: Nothing much.
Speaker 1: Here, But eventually some real life drama happened.
Speaker 2: They got a lot of crazy content out of that,
Speaker 2: because the husband and wife ultimately divorce by the end.
Speaker 1: A tense breakup unfolding before our eyes. Oh now, it's
Speaker 1: starting to sound familiar. And that wasn't the only scandalous
Speaker 1: thing happening in this average American family.
Speaker 2: Their son basically comes out as gay. It's very coded,
Speaker 2: but there's a whole episode of his mother visiting him
Speaker 2: at the Chelsea Hotel in New York where like they
Speaker 2: go to this crazy drag show.
Speaker 1: Oh now, we got some controversy, at least by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three standards.
Speaker 2: And it obviously caused a huge stir when it came out.
Speaker 2: Some people were like, it's the end of America, right,
Speaker 2: We're seeing an American family fall apart, where you know,
Speaker 2: we've got this guy who's clearly gay.
Speaker 1: The family son Lance later came out as gay. I
Speaker 1: don't think an American Family. Producers knew Lance was in
Speaker 1: the process of coming out when they chose to cast
Speaker 1: the Loud family, but it became the most interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the whole show. Years later, when the reality genre
Speaker 1: started to pick up, producers took a page from An
Speaker 1: American Family. The cast people who were outsiders who are different,
Speaker 1: because that brought in viewers. Even with all the makings
Speaker 1: of great reality TV, An American Family didn't really inspire
Speaker 1: any other reality programming. For a while, it was seen
Speaker 1: as an artsy docuseries, not something to be replicated season
Speaker 1: after season. After it, we had shows like Cops, which
Speaker 1: presented itself as raw reality from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: police Star Search, which I guess is a bit like
Speaker 1: American Idol and America's Funniest Home Videos, where every week
Speaker 1: a lucky family was rewarded for catching the moment when
Speaker 1: some poor dad gets knocked upside the head with a
Speaker 1: pinata sea But nothing like An American Family. That is
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety two when MTV premiered The Real World.
Speaker 14: This is the True Story True story Seven strangers picked.
Speaker 2: To live in a lot and have.
Speaker 1: Their lives taped to find out what happens.
Speaker 12: When people stop being polite?
Speaker 1: Could you get the phone.
Speaker 2: And start getting real?
Speaker 1: The Real World.
Speaker 2: The reason why they decide to do The Real World
Speaker 2: at MTV is because the ratings were kind of flagging.
Speaker 2: They still obviously did a lot of music videos, but
Speaker 2: people were kind of losing interest, and so they saw
Speaker 2: that something that young audiences really loved was Beverly Host
Speaker 2: nine O two and zero. So MTV thought, let's do that.
Speaker 2: Let's do a scripted show. But it turns out it's
Speaker 2: really expensive, right, You need writers, you need actors, all
Speaker 2: that stuff. So instead they went for a reality TV format.
Speaker 1: If you go back to the first season of the
Speaker 1: Real World, you'll notice that everyone was an artist of
Speaker 1: some kind trying to make it in New York City.
Speaker 1: It was a group of young dancers, actors, rappers, and singers,
Speaker 1: all hoping to get their big break.
Speaker 2: They were actually led to believe that this was going
Speaker 2: to really focus on their art and kind of launch
Speaker 2: their careers.
Speaker 1: MTV's The Real World was the first time when people
Speaker 1: started using reality TV as a platform or a means
Speaker 1: to launch the career they actually wanted. At this point,
Speaker 1: there was no such thing as a reality star and
Speaker 1: for the first two seasons the show was well boring
Speaker 1: and the writings were bad. That is until the third
Speaker 1: season featured Pedro ol Zamora, an HIV positive gay man.
Speaker 12: I am a person living with age, and I am
Speaker 12: a gay man, and I am Hispanic, I'm a person
Speaker 12: of color, and this simply who I am.
Speaker 2: You know, the AIDS crisis was kind of at its
Speaker 2: peak at that time. It was pretty remarkable to put
Speaker 2: an HIV positive gay man on TV.
Speaker 1: Pedro was a sympathetic hero you could root for, but
Speaker 1: this wasn't an artsy docu series. They needed to bring
Speaker 1: the drama to stay on air. And every hero needs
Speaker 1: a villain. Enter a puck who was antagonistic and openly homophobic.
Speaker 2: Great idea, right, They put on someone who was abrasive,
Speaker 2: who didn't back down, and as a result, you had
Speaker 2: your perfect villain and you had your perfect fit. Though
Speaker 2: very melodramatic structure.
Speaker 1: That structure eventually became the backbone of reality TV. Producers
Speaker 1: understood that rooting for your faiths isn't as fun without
Speaker 1: someone to root against. That tried in true formula. It's
Speaker 1: something we see season after season on a certain reality
Speaker 1: modeling competition show. I don't think casting Pedro was some
Speaker 1: altruistic act humanizing the AIDS crisis. I think they were
Speaker 1: using his identity to stir up conflict, just like I
Speaker 1: think A and TM did when they cast Isis King
Speaker 1: as the show's first trans woman. The Real World's success
Speaker 1: was a turning point in the history of reality TV.
Speaker 1: After nineteen ninety five, new shows started popping up like Daisies, Judge,
Speaker 1: Judy Making, the Band, Big Brother, Fear Factor, The Amazing Race,
Speaker 1: American Idol, The Bachelor Survivor. And here's one big reason
Speaker 1: reality TV exploded. It's a lot cheaper to make than
Speaker 1: scripted programming. Networks realized they could get the same viewership
Speaker 1: for a fraction of the cost of a show like
Speaker 1: Gilmour Girls or X Files. There were no pesky actors, unions,
Speaker 1: no costume designers, and no writers.
Speaker 2: So this creates a perfect environment for something like reality
Speaker 2: TV because of how cheap it is, because you can
Speaker 2: avoid union labor and all of those things. The other
Speaker 2: factor is the rise of tabloid culture at this time.
Speaker 2: So you know, there were always tabloid magazines. You know,
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, my grandmother loved the inquirer
Speaker 2: and she I think she called them the scandal sheets,
Speaker 2: which is such a great, such a great term, but
Speaker 2: they really take off, and as a society we get
Speaker 2: very interested in seeing celebrities caught unawares, and as a result,
Speaker 2: you have these individuals who we called it at the time,
Speaker 2: I think we called them like celebutants, people who were
Speaker 2: famous for being famous. This was an outrageous idea to
Speaker 2: people at the time. They just couldn't believe it. So
Speaker 2: paris Hilton, Kim Gardashian, people who didn't do anything. They
Speaker 2: just kind of insisted as pretty rich girls who go
Speaker 2: and party.
Speaker 1: And this is where Reality TV History meets a young
Speaker 1: Tyra Banks, who had an idea to cash in on
Speaker 1: this newly evolved genre. And we just spent ten episodes
Speaker 1: talking about how that went. After the break, we're revisiting
Speaker 1: A and TM's worst tropes and their dark history, and
Speaker 1: then I'll be signing off for real this time. Back
Speaker 1: in episode seven, we explored the angry black woman trope.
Speaker 1: A and TM had a pattern of casting and editing
Speaker 1: contestants to fit the stereotype that black women are loud, mean, bitter, confrontational,
Speaker 1: belligerent divas.
Speaker 4: And we didn't get kicked off for hinting.
Speaker 1: Somebody yn't ask me toe up right now?
Speaker 2: Shut up?
Speaker 7: Did she not come up to me and say that.
Speaker 1: Honest competition no matter what any girl say. But A
Speaker 1: N T M didn't invent the A b W trope,
Speaker 1: They just did it really well. The trope has history.
Speaker 1: There was a radio sitcom called Amos and Andy that
Speaker 1: ran from the twenties until the early nineteen sixties. It
Speaker 1: was also briefly on television. The characters Amos and Andy
Speaker 1: were two black men who moved up north from down
Speaker 1: South for a better life. On the radio program, the
Speaker 1: two men who voiced Amos and Andy were white. They
Speaker 1: used offensive accents that were supposed to mock black dialect.
Speaker 1: The show was extremely racist and extremely popular. There was
Speaker 1: one one central woman on the show. Her name was Sapphire.
Speaker 1: The character was voiced by an actual black woman, Ernestine Wade,
Speaker 1: but it was still a demeaning caricature of black women.
Speaker 1: Sapphire didn't have any redeeming qualities. She was always loud, rude, overbearing,
Speaker 1: and angry.
Speaker 2: You are the laziest no one.
Speaker 4: You ain't never supported me.
Speaker 8: In twenty two years. You ain't got no ambition.
Speaker 13: You are the weakest, most finalss cat.
Speaker 2: I'm never miss and you ain't never done.
Speaker 12: Nothing can make a home for me, and I'm.
Speaker 1: Leaving you sound familiar. When Amazon Andy was on air,
Speaker 1: there were very few roles for black people in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: This actress, Ernestine Wade, was actually a theater trained for
Speaker 1: former singer and musician, but she was relegated to one
Speaker 1: no roles Like Sapphire. The Sapphire character confirmed widely held
Speaker 1: racist beliefs at the time about black women, and that
Speaker 1: trope took root in America entertainment. I could do an
Speaker 1: entire podcast just on the variations and evolutions of Sapphire
Speaker 1: and media. The Sapphire character never died, she just became
Speaker 1: the angry black woman. Okay, y'all still with me. Let's
Speaker 1: take a trip to a more recent history, a time
Speaker 1: when most of us were alive. Although we may wish
Speaker 1: we didn't have to live through this, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, a period of rampant body shaming.
Speaker 1: Antim is in the pantheon of body shaming offenders from
Speaker 1: this era, and I want to give y'all some context
Speaker 1: about the two thousands culture that birthed top model. Jess
Speaker 1: Sims is a health writer and she remembers just how
Speaker 1: brutal the aughts were on women's bodies.
Speaker 8: America's next top model is such a tip of the
Speaker 8: iceberg in terms of what we're looking at we had,
Speaker 8: I always say A really good example was the treatment
Speaker 8: of Renees Elweger was in Bridget jones Diary.
Speaker 1: The movie Bridget Jones's Diary came out in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one and it took America by storm. The entire
Speaker 1: premise was that Bridget Jones was fat, from beat and
Speaker 1: looking for love. But Bridget Jones was no more than
Speaker 1: a size ten and weighed one hundred and thirty six pounds.
Speaker 1: Renee Zelwicker put on weight for the role and lost
Speaker 1: it afterwards. For years, she says, strangers would come up
Speaker 1: to her on the street and ask.
Speaker 13: How did you lose that weight?
Speaker 1: She refused to answer the question. Here's writer Jess Simms
Speaker 1: again in.
Speaker 8: The early two thousands, No matter what your body looked like,
Speaker 8: it was a problem. We also have Jessica Simpson.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, there was a photo of
Speaker 1: popstar Jessica Simpson on stage at a concert.
Speaker 8: She's wearing these high waisted denim jeans and a leopard
Speaker 8: print belt, and it was on the news cycle for
Speaker 8: a good two or three weeks.
Speaker 1: The photo went early to thousands viral, not because Jessica
Speaker 1: Simpson was doing anything in it, but because she had
Speaker 1: gained some weight. Jessica Simpson rose to fame in the
Speaker 1: late nineties when she was a literal teenager and because
Speaker 1: she had the nerve to be bigger than she was
Speaker 1: when she was seventeen. She found her picture on the
Speaker 1: cover of all the tabloids and the subject of a
Speaker 1: lot of blog posts, blogs like Perez Hilton's. His name
Speaker 1: kept coming up while I was interviewing people for this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad I decided to interview him myself because
Speaker 1: it was illuminating. I have some more clips from our
Speaker 1: interview I'll share in a minute, but first, here's what
Speaker 1: jess had to say about Perez's role in that body
Speaker 1: shaming era.
Speaker 8: We saw people who got famous off of being cruel
Speaker 8: to fat people. I always talk about Perez Hilton, who
Speaker 8: tried to turn a new lead, which I always find
Speaker 8: to be very bizarre because he was disgusting, cruel to
Speaker 8: all women. He's such a good example of how gay
Speaker 8: men can be so misogynistic. Beyond his calls for Britney
Speaker 8: Spears to hurt herself, which he was very open about
Speaker 8: and was very persistent, his coverage of women's bodies. It
Speaker 8: was a really good example of how the media were
Speaker 8: able to make money off of discussing women's bodies. And
Speaker 8: these weren't people who were journalists who not a journalistic
Speaker 8: code of ethics.
Speaker 1: Writer Michelle Konstantinovsky also had thoughts about Perez of impact
Speaker 1: and the climate of the early two thousands.
Speaker 14: Tabloid culture was beyond out of control at that point.
Speaker 14: We all remember, you know, Lindsay Lohan and Parashltan and
Speaker 14: Nicole Ritchie either being celebrated or torn apart depending on
Speaker 14: the day. You know, in the Perez Hilton of it all,
Speaker 14: all of the bloggers who felt very comfortable not only
Speaker 14: displaying women's bodies but literally circling parts of them and
Speaker 14: magnifying them and saying what was wrong with them? But
Speaker 14: the Perez Hilton culture just kept doubling down, doubling down
Speaker 14: on how it's not only acceptable to dissect and almost
Speaker 14: like take glee in mocking women's bodies.
Speaker 1: But it's expected. That's what we do as a culture.
Speaker 1: Perez was one of the absolute worst when it came
Speaker 1: to body shaming. This is the man who said one
Speaker 1: of Bruce Willis's daughters was a fugly child. He described
Speaker 1: the OC's Misha Barton's thighs as being mar faalicious, and
Speaker 1: he once called Britney Spears fat Elvis in a headline
Speaker 1: no one was off limits. These days, though, Perez is
Speaker 1: singing a slightly different tune. He's been on a bit
Speaker 1: of an apology tour. When I interviewed him, I had
Speaker 1: prepared some hard hitting questions about the damage he caused
Speaker 1: with his post, but he came out swinging.
Speaker 3: I take full accountability for everything I did. I can't
Speaker 3: blame ignorance, and I can't blame you youth. I was
Speaker 3: in my late twenties and I was so selfish. I
Speaker 3: was incredibly selfish. I knew at the time that what
Speaker 3: I was doing was wrong, and I didn't care. I
Speaker 3: was selfish. I cared about me. I cared about the clicks,
Speaker 3: the page view. I was purposefully trying to be shocking
Speaker 3: because that worked. It got attention, it got me views,
Speaker 3: and it got me success. I was horrible and I
Speaker 3: was rewarded for it.
Speaker 1: Whether or not this Maya Kulpa is genuine. Perez knows
Speaker 1: what to say, and that's strikingly different than what we
Speaker 1: hear from say Tyra Banks.
Speaker 3: Attention is a very powerful drug, and I was an
Speaker 3: attention addict.
Speaker 1: Perez might have changed his ways, but the thing is,
Speaker 1: today there are millions of ress. When reality TV started
Speaker 1: eighty years ago, it was openly deemed a social and
Speaker 1: psychological experiment. Then it became normal, and today we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of a new psychological experiment, one that's hard
Speaker 1: to opt out of. Amanda clin again.
Speaker 2: It feels like, right now everything is reality TV because
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, of course social media, you
Speaker 2: can hate follow people online and come on, we all
Speaker 2: do it because they're drama and they put all their
Speaker 2: mess out there and you're like, oh, what's messy up
Speaker 2: to today? So like, that's your personal reality show.
Speaker 1: And we're all the main character in our own story.
Speaker 1: Amanda thinks it's changing the way we approach our daily lives.
Speaker 2: You see something happening, you pull your phone out, not
Speaker 2: because you want to remember it later, it's because you're like, ooh, context,
Speaker 2: I don't have a big social media following, but even
Speaker 2: I'm like, ooh, this is so interesting. Let me get this.
Speaker 2: We're all reality TV producers. We're all curating the world
Speaker 2: for other people, and I don't think that's a good
Speaker 2: thing because I think that's changing the way we view
Speaker 2: each other. We are viewing other people as content, so
Speaker 2: we're more prone to of you each other, I think
Speaker 2: as characters.
Speaker 1: Now, reality TV started this phenomenon of wanting to watch
Speaker 1: real people in ridiculous situations and everyday dramas, and now,
Speaker 1: in a way, we are all on a reality show,
Speaker 1: whether we want to be or not. That's all for
Speaker 1: this very special bonus episode. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Curse of America's Next Top Model. Someone once told me,
Speaker 1: in this business, the only reward you get is to
Speaker 1: get to do it again. And my team and I
Speaker 1: worked really hard. So if you want another season or
Speaker 1: more episodes, the best way to let us know is
Speaker 1: by leaving a five star rating and a glowing review.
Speaker 1: All right, brow the credits one last time. The Curse
Speaker 1: of America's Next Top Model is a production of Glass Podcast,
Speaker 1: a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass, hosted and
Speaker 1: senior produced by me Bridget Armstrong. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: Monique Leboard, also produced by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning.
Speaker 1: Associate producers are Alisha Key, Kristin Melciriy, and Curry Richmond.
Speaker 1: Consulting producers on this podcast are Oliver TwixT and Kate Taylor.
Speaker 1: Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Criincheck. Audio
Speaker 1: editing and mixing on this episode by Matt del Vecchio
Speaker 1: and Dean Welsh. The Curse of America's Next Top Model
Speaker 1: theme was composed by Oliver Bains. Music library provided by
Speaker 1: myb Music. Special thanks to everyone we interviewed, especially the
Speaker 1: former contestants, and for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Also check out the Etglass Podcast Instagram for Curse of
Speaker 1: America's Next Top Model behind the scenes content.