In the last week, Twitter and TikTok have been holding an impromptu, unflattering retrospective of America’s Next Top Model, the modeling reality-competition show created and hosted by Tyra Banks. One 2006 clip in particular has gone viral, featuring Banks, runway coach Miss J Alexander, and photo shoot director Jay Manuel telling cycle six contestant Danielle Evans—who would go on to win the season—that she needed to close the gap in her teeth if she wanted to succeed as a model.
“Do you really think you can have a CoverGirl contract with a gap in your mouth?” Bank asks, sticking her pinky in between her front teeth and mocking Evans’s mouth. (A CoverGirl contract was one of the show’s main prizes.) It’s an uncomfortable moment that has since prompted Twitter users to share even more cringeworthy clips from the show—like a couple of terrible blackface photo shoots—and debate Banks’s status as a TV villain with close-minded beauty standards. Well, Banks has heard all the chatter, issuing a brief, vague statement about the viral clips on Friday.
“Been seeing the posts about the insensitivity of some past ANTM moments and I agree with you,” Banks wrote on Twitter. “Looking back, those were some really off choices. Appreciate your honest feedback and am sending so much love and virtual hugs.”
Manuel also commented, sharing photos of Evans’s eventual CoverGirl photo shoot on his Instagram. “The #ANTM winner who went on to #slay despite her gap!” he wrote. “I was honored to do her #makeup for/produce her finale shoot & #CoverGirl ad, and I’m blessed to still call her my friend today. ❤️U.”
Meanwhile, model Slick Woods, who has a prominent gap in her teeth, posted the ANTM clip on her Instagram, saying that episode “fucked up” her self-image when she was younger. “No one should ever talk to you like that,” she added, tagging Evan’s Instagram handle.
Evans, now 34, then posted a video of her own on Instagram addressing the clip and saying there was a whole lot more that went into the moment that never aired on television. In her post, Evans said all the contestants were taken to the dentist, where Evans asked for a cleaning and teeth whitening. But, she added, the dentist “kept asking me if I wanted to close my gap,” which she declined. “Nah, bruh.”
Once she arrived back on the set to go on camera with Banks, Manuel, and Miss J, Banks immediately asked her why she didn’t close her gap. Evans says she was intentionally not told that Banks wanted her to get her gap closed, a way to manufacture drama for the cameras. “I knew that I was being set up,” Evans said. She claims she and Banks went back and forth, but the comments about her gap weren’t exactly what bothered her. “All of that was trivial to me. I’ve heard it all before,” she said. “What I was tight about was them trying to play me.”
She was inspired to make the video, Evans continued, so she could address all the young girls who may have seen that clip and become insecure about their own appearance. “You’re beautiful,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you have a gap…what makes you beautiful is in here. It’s a matter of your self-worth.”
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