I’ve struggled with disordered consuming my whole life. Being 13 years previous and obsessive about America’s Subsequent High Mannequin in tandem with the ever-pervasive weight-reduction plan and tabloid tradition of the 2000s completely contributed to my shaky physique picture. With a frontal lobe about as agency as in a single day oats, I, like many others my age, fell sufferer to the beliefs introduced within the docuseries: It’s simply how issues are. My mates and I entered center college and traded juice bins and multiplication tables for weight-reduction plan soda and calorie counting. We didn’t perceive on the time how the media we consumed, not our diets, was inflicting our anguish.

However in Actuality Verify, Banks—who has been interviewed concerning the unfavorable influence of her present a number of instances—smizes unflinchingly into the digital camera lens as she utters each adage and platitude as an alternative of, “Hey, I am sorry for fucking up a era of younger folks—notably younger girls.” (For what it’s value, Banks has mentioned in previous interviews that she “agreed” with criticisms for “off decisions,” however it was nonetheless predicated by the “it was a special time” spiel.)

However the sins in opposition to contestants—and society writ giant, for that matter—lengthen past distorted conversations about magnificence. The spotlight reel of what-the-absolute-hell moments on America’s Subsequent High Mannequin additionally included the now-infamous race-swap photograph shoot, a photograph shoot the place the fashions pose as unhoused folks, and a spine-chilling photograph shoot the place the fashions (one among whom was the daughter of a gun violence survivor) pose as homicide victims. The fashions Banks vied to empower so audaciously turned her dolls for makeovers and enjoying fake. It stripped contestants of their bodily autonomy—if they might not protest a bob, they didn’t have a leg to face on when the collection took unpredictably darkish turns.

As many followers vividly bear in mind, the manufacturing filmed and aired cycle two contestant Shandi Sullivan’s intoxicated encounter with a person in Milan, which she describes within the docuseries as sexual assault. “It’s a bit of arduous for me to speak about manufacturing as a result of that’s not my territory,” Banks mentioned when requested why manufacturing didn’t intervene to guard a clearly intoxicated Sullivan, blaming Mok and different members of the crew. (Author’s word: Banks additionally held an government producer title on the present; the docuseries doesn’t interrogate precisely how manufacturing wouldn’t have been her “territory” on this occasion.)

In a single occasion, she does apologize—on digital camera, not face-to-face—to cycle 4 contestant Keenyah Hill, who confronted undesirable sexual advances from a male mannequin on the set of a photograph shoot. These situations occurred on digital camera and in entrance of your complete manufacturing crew, however when Hill stopped the shoot to share her misery, she was dismissed and later instructed she wanted to take extra management. Banks’s response in hindsight: “None of us knew… however she wanted extra [protection],” Banks mentioned of Hill’s expertise. “Boo-boo, I’m so sorry.”

Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix