Some aspects of “America’s Next Top Model” aren’t aging well.
Created by Tyra Banks, the reality competition series followed aspiring models vying to win a modeling contract. During the makeover phase of the competition, contestants underwent dramatic hair transformations, some of which had lasting consequences.
Cycle 1 winner Adrianne Curry claimed in a Thursday, Oct. 30, Instagram video that she still has patches on her scalp that won’t grow hair 22 years after her “America’s Next Top Model” makeover.
“I’m partially bald right here and there,” Curry said, gesturing to her scalp. “The reason is, when I was on ‘Top Model’, Tyra Banks told them to put a weave in my hair. The Black stylists that were putting it in pulled her aside, and I heard them tell her, ‘This white chick’s hair is too fragile for this.’”
Despite the stylists’ warnings, Curry said Banks told them, ‘“Just do it.’” As the competition went on, Curry developed “an oozing wound from the braids.”
Once the show ended, Curry went to a “Black salon” to get the weave removed.
“It took hours and hours for them to get it out. I was left with a horrific mullet [and] scabs all over my head,” she recalled. “They were so sweet. They just couldn’t believe that this was done to me.”
Curry couldn’t tell the salon employees who gave her the weave due to an NDA agreement, but said they joked it must’ve been “someone who hates you.”
Although the weave is long gone, Curry said her hair is “permanently damaged” from the experience. While filming “America’s Next Top Model,” the weave was “so painful” and itchy.
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“[Fellow contestant] Kesse [Wallace] was trying to teach me how to itch it, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know any of this. Before that, she saw me [scratching it] with a fork,” Curry recalled. “I think most of those makeovers were done just to torture us, honestly. … It felt so validating to be in that salon with all those women who were like, ‘Who would do this to you?’ I’m like, ‘Her name is Tyra.’”
“America’s Next Top Model” premiered on UPN in 2003. It ran for 24 seasons, or cycles, later moving to the CW and then to VH1. The show was the subject of a 2024 episode of the AppleTV+ docuseries “The Dark Side of Reality TV.”
‘“ANTM” has been called out for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards and for controversial challenges, such as a “biracial” photo shoot in cycle 13 for which some contestants had to darken their skin and a cycle 4 photo shoot that forced contestant Kahlen Rondot to pose in a coffin one day after her friend died.
Banks addressed some of the controversy while accepting the first Luminary Spotlight honor at the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards in March.
“Did we get it [all] right? Hell no. I said some dumb s—, but I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the Internet when there were 24 cycles of changing the world,” Banks said after highlighting ANTM’s diversity. “We all evolve. We all get better together. And I am so excited that I, and so many of us, have opened that door for others to follow.”
“America’s Next Top Model” is available to stream on Hulu.
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