My Weekend Rewatch: ANTM Petite Cycle
Alright, so let me tell you what I ended up doing this past weekend. I was just browsing, clicking around on the TV, looking for something, anything, to watch. You know how it gets. Stumbled across some old seasons of America’s Next Top Model. Didn’t think much of it at first.
Then I saw it was that specific cycle, the one they did for shorter women, the “petite edition” they called it back then. Cycle 13, I think? Suddenly felt like diving back into that. Curiosity, maybe nostalgia, who knows. So, I just decided, right then and there, to rewatch the whole thing from the start.
Fired up the streaming service where I found it. Got comfortable on the sofa. And just started watching. Episode after episode. Didn’t really have a plan, just let it play. Took up a good chunk of Saturday and Sunday, actually.
Watching it again after all these years was… something. I found myself really focusing on how they handled the whole “petite” angle.
- Remembering how big a deal they made about breaking the mold.
- Paying attention to the camera tricks, the posing, everything they did to make the contestants look statuesque despite their height.
- Thinking about the challenges they put these girls through. Same ANTM craziness, but with that added layer of proving short models could work.
It was interesting to see the dynamics again. The judging panels, Tyra’s comments, the photoshoots. Some were amazing, some were disasters, just like every cycle. But I kept thinking about the pressure specifically tied to their height. It felt different from the other seasons I remembered.
Thinking Back on It
Seeing those contestants again, remembering some of their stories… it felt quite real this time around. Maybe because I’m older now, I don’t know. I wasn’t really judging them like I might have years ago. More just observing their journey through that crazy process.
I noticed how they tried to make a point about high fashion being possible for shorter women. Whether it actually changed anything in the long run, hard to say from my couch, right? But the effort was there in the show’s narrative.
Honestly, the whole exercise was just me, watching TV. No big practical project here. But it was a practice in observation, I suppose. Thinking about how industries set standards, and what happens when someone tries to challenge them, even in a reality show format.
So yeah, that was my weekend project. Went down the ANTM petite rabbit hole. It was a way to spend the time, definitely brought back some memories, and left me thinking a bit about the whole modeling world again. Just a simple rewatch, but it filled the weekend.
