America's Next Top Model (draft)

America’s Next Top Model is a reality show watched by many people all over the country. In this show young women from all over the country audition and compete to become the country’s best top model. America’s Next Top Model is the perfect show to watch for those who love glamour and fashion. It immerses viewers into the material world and has become a fascination among young girls today. America’s Next Top Model represents pop culture today as it depicts what is beautiful to teen girls and what is expected from them by today’s society.

Shows like this one are one of the many causes of eating disorders in our society today. Tall skinny girls featured on this show become role models to young girls only because of their appearances. The models in this show make sacrifices to look pretty and view others as competition. This concept relays a dangerous underlying message to adolescent females who then believe it is their job to do the same. Eating disorders have become a part of today’s pop culture as young women struggle to have the “perfect body”.

This show not only represents today’s pop culture but also depicts young women as pretty objects instead of human beings. They are treated as show pieces as they prepare for various photo shoots and fashion shows. Make-up, costumes, and props make their appearances appealing to the eye but no one actually gets to know them as people just by looking at their photos. The models in this show never display their natural beauty but rather rely on material products to beautify themselves. The models also make themselves vulnerable to the male gaze. Revealing outfits of very small sizes are worn by the models. Typically their photo shoots have a sexual feel to them that again is used to make them more attractive. America’s Next Top Model models allow for men to not only see them in revealing clothes and suggestive poses, but to also judge them on their appearances.

This show does not equally represent the female population in America as it only shows women who make their lives out of fashion and beauty. Models generally don’t focus too much on their education when they can make a profit out of advertisements and fashion shows. All women do not have the same interests as these models. Many women are geeks in the sense that they would rather enjoy professions in other fields such as engineering or medicine. These women defy society’s version of what today’s women should be like. America’s Next Top Model stereotypes women to be beauty seekers when in reality some women find fashion to not be one of their top priorities. Shows like America’s Next Top Model allow female geeks to disappear from pop culture and instead stereotype women to only be obsessed with the material world.

Many of the women who audition for this show do not have a very strong educational background and therefore would not be able to provide for themselves without a man to support them. Though this show does give the opportunity to one model to have a high earning career, many of the rest of the women are stuck to having to rely on others for financial stability. This plays into the whole idea of how women aren’t supposed to be the ones working in a household. In fact, models like the one in this show follow the common stereotype from the past that says it is a women’s responsibility to learn how to look pretty and know what a man likes rather than to get a formal education.