Tyra would find whatever person's trauma is and turn that into a theme photo shoot.

Were there any photoshoots that you had that sort of tested your comfort level?

I do think that they used our stories and vulnerability to weaponize and to kind of watch us kind of squirm, as they say.

Going back, there was a couple shoots that made me highly uncomfortable.

One was the underwater shoot. I was like, what are we doing here? I'm a Florida girl, but my

goodness, you know. Another shoot I thought was absolutely ridiculous was the...

Hello and welcome to Obsess the podcast. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast and I am joined today by my good friend and substack extraordinaire Kevin Fallon. How's it going, Kevin?

Hi, Matt. Thanks for that intro.

Yeah, well, we are here today to talk about America's next top model because you have one of the original winners,

Season 2 winner, Yowana, as our guest on the podcast today, right?

I do.

I'm very excited because, A, I like so many people, so many millennials, was obsessed with

the show when I was younger.

It premiered, I believe, gosh, like 23 years ago. And I remember, obviously, you know,

back then you turned down on TV, you didn't know necessarily what you were going to watch.

Yeah.

There wasn't like a streaming service where you're picking out what you want to watch each night.

We were just watching whatever was on.

Exactly. And I remember distinctly during the first season of Top Model, just coming upon it because I happened to be

home that night and I needed to put something on the television. And I became a weekly viewer

of it. And then they did this amazing thing where VH1 would play like 40 hours in a row,

Top Model, just like these extreme marathon sessions.

...