Bridget Armstrong

This haircut will make them a model.

or this makeover, or this, you know, whatever.

And once they got out into the world, they were rejected.

I had at least one model tell me her hair was cut off, and she went to an agency that said, we'll sign you when you grow your hair back.

So it's like they were being told stuff that was strictly for, I think, our entertainment, and really had nothing to do with their ability to book jobs.

Yeah.

I think with Dani's case in particular, and I can't say for sure, Dani was a Southern Black girl, right?

And we get into this on my podcast, Tyra's relationship specifically with the Black contestants on her show.

Tyra has a thing with respectability, I think, and Blackness.

And I think for her, Dani's gap...

represented her being country, her not being refined, right?

And so I do think to a certain extent it was for the entertainment to see if she could do it.

But I think that like Tyra didn't see her gap as beautiful because to her it represented a lack of access, right?

It represented Dani being a working class Black girl, right?

But on the other contestant who she later widened her gap, she was a white contestant, that then for her connected to

models and actresses, white models and actresses who support their gap and is celebrated.

So sometimes, I mean, I don't even know what's worse, right?

Like there's the arbitrary nature of let me pick this thing because I think it'll be entertaining, right?

But sometimes I just think it was Tyra projecting her insecurities or projecting her hangups and her respectability on some of these women.

And that doesn't just play out in the makeovers.