“There’s something about her that I like!” squeals Tyra about new ANTM contestant Ann. Gee, could it be her rremarkably thin waistline?
Ann does appear to be wearing a corset, so her real waist may be larger than what we see in the clip. And obviously the footage has been cut, so maybe what Tyra really likes about her is her walk or her ability to smize. But this is the edit that the CW chose to publicize — one that shows the judges oohing and aahing over Ann’s extremely small dimensions, and Jay Manuel making a crack about how Miss J will soon be subsisting on “Tic Tacs and watercress” in order to whittle his waist to Ann’s proportions. Sure, it’s a joke, but isn’t crash-dieting to look more like an extremely skinny model exactly what Tyra doesn’t want her viewers to do? To be clear, it’s not Ann’s appearance that’s the problem here — it’s the way the clip fetishizes her waist size, and then makes light of unhealthy ways to get there.ANTM obviously focuses on looks in a pretty conventional way, but Tyra’s been pretty good in the past about preaching body acceptance. She started a model search for plus-size teens. And her impassioned response to people who criticized her own weight became justifiably famous (though she’s since slimmed down dramatically):
Given her history, Tyra probably doesn’t want to promote a totally unrealistic image of female anatomy. But by going gaga for a girl who’s almost certainly shrunk her already tiny waist using corsets, that’s exactly what she’s doing.America’s Next Top Model Trailer – Ann [YouTube]
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