Picture this; I’m standing in line at Erewhon because I’ve roped Better Half into helping me film another smoothie taste test and someone DM’s me to say…

Needless to say, this was the first of many texts / DMs and I had NO IDEA the production team was using my content... let alone using it more than once.

Yep, that’s my face on our TV!

On the one hand, I felt really chuffed that anything I had posted had resonated enough to make it into a documentary that dives into the problematic nature of ANTM. (I’ve done a deep dive on TikTok into each of the eps if you’re interested.)

But on the other hand, I felt incredibly exposed.I joked online about wanting compensation - I don’t, and I think this is categorised as “fair use” - but a heads-up would have been nice.Because yes, I made this content public, but I made it public in a pocket of the internet where it felt safe to do so.

I did NOT expect it to be viewed by approximately 100 million eyeballs. (FML, that made me feel a bit sick )

Which on a much smaller scale - is another example of a TV show using shock factor without considering the people it uses to get that shock factor… which is exactly what America’s Next Top Model did, but in a much bigger, more dangerous and problematic way.

And that’s kind of the irony, isn’t it?

A documentary about a show that blurred the lines between empowerment and exploitation ended up blurring the lines of consent and exposure all over again.

ANTM built an empire on turning real people into compelling television first and fully considered humans second and now even the conversation about it can’t quite escape doing the same thing!

Because the thing about visibility is that it’s only empowering when you get to choose it.

Otherwise, it’s just another reminder that in both reality TV and the content economy, your face can travel much further than your voice ever does — and sometimes, further than you ever agreed for it to go

L x

P.s. Watch the documentary series at your own caution... it covers A LOT of difficult topics, most of which are very hard to watch.