America's Next Top Model

One day I needed something to watch while I was riding our recumbent bike in the basement and I naturally turned to MTV to find a show that required no thinking. America’s Next Top Model was on, so I decided to watch it because I knew that some of my friends enjoy it. What I found is that it is not only the incredibly vapid show that I imagined but also very addictive.
The idea of the show is that some models complete a challenge and some sort of photo shoot every week. At the end of that week, they are evaluated on how they did in these by a panel of judges and one of them is let go. And when they are not out on photo shoots, they are living in the same house together and interacting with the result of much drama. So essentially it seems to be a mix between The Bachelor and American Idol.
I don’t watch America’s Next Top Model when new episodes come out in the current season, but only watch reruns on MTV on the weekend. Because of this I only see snippets and random episodes of old series. However, you can get the general idea from that. One thing I have noticed is that the panel of judges (who mostly stay the same) are often very rude. I have heard models compared to Michael Jackson and even heard it said that a girl could stand to lose 150 lbs (even though that would make her 30 lbs, which “would be better”). Granted, some of these things were said when the models weren’t around, but still. They often praise models for their positive attitudes, but usually that means smiling at someone who just said something quite offensive to you. I’m not entirely sure why the judges feel that the perfect model is someone who lets people degrade them and talk down to them. That doesn’t exactly sound like confidence to me.
Obviously though, the show is very entertaining to watch. But here’s a good example of the treatment I was talking about earlier: