3 min read

Governance, Values & America’s Next Top Model

A few days after Netflix dropped the trailer for the America’s Next Top Model documentary, I made the mistake of showing up to give a guest lecture on democratic systems resiliency to public policy students wearing a tan trench coat.

The students dragged me.

Thanks a lot, Tyra.

So I pivoted. We ended up talking about pop culture and politics instead. I was genuinely curious — most of them weren’t even alive when America’s Next Top Model first aired. Why the excitement? Where is the energy coming from?

Many first encountered the cultural fossil of Top Model during the pandemic when the world stopped, routines broke, and we collectively untethered from so many toxic norms: long commutes, girlboss maximalism, $20 salads, grind-as-identity.

Before that rupture, interrogating toxicity at scale required too much friction. Who has the time? Who has the money? Who cares?

And so the show went on and on and on.

The pandemic created a cultural record-scratch moment. We suddenly had the time. We had (for some, briefly) the money. And we very much cared. We looked at ourselves through the mirror of culture and what we saw was more than embarrassing — it was racist, abusive, extractive, and wildly meme-able.

Top Model wasn’t just a show that didn’t age well. It was a product of an unregulated, un-unionized era of reality television — competitive loathing disguised as opportunity. A machine optimized to exploit dreamers surviving a culture that constantly told them they were not enough.

Of course, with the awareness we carry in 2026, there’s an appetite for accountability. I’m not surprised by the backlash.

I’m surprised by the timing.

“Look at who is the President," I pointed out.

The room went quiet.

But my curiosity remains.

Because even in the heyday of Top Model, better options were always there. They just required something our overscheduled, under-resourced, overbooked culture rarely had space for:

Effort.

Bethann Hardison is the person Tyra Banks wishes she could be.

Hardison has mentored Black models since the 1960s, radically reshaping high fashion. At the 1973 Battle of Versailles, American designers cast ten Black models, unprecedented at the time, that included Hardison and shifted the global fashion imagination. In the 1980s, she launched her own model management firm. She fiercely advocated for workplace protections and diverse representation, elevating the careers of Naomi Campbell, Iman, Tyson Beckford and so many others.

Her success was not linear. In the 1990s, when runways became less diverse and casting calls brazenly read “No Blacks, no ethnics,” Hardison organized and pushed back. She did it again in the early 2000s. And again in 2013. And again today.

The documentary Invisible Beauty is an extraordinary celebration of her life’s work — and a palate cleanser after the chaos of Top Model.

Bethann Hardison was always there.

Better was always there.

But better required friction. Better required looking closer. Better required choosing something that didn’t scream for attention but stood quietly for dignity.

Better required effort.

So if this matters so much — if governance and culture are downstream from the values we normalize — why don’t we choose better more often?

This week, I lived this dissonance when a cascade of small disasters turned what should have been a five-hour journey home into a 30-hour odyssey. One of those disasters was Trump administration's suspension of Global Entry. I stood in a four-hour customs line, exhausted, watching the elderly and children around me meltdown under fluorescent lights.

I took out my phone, recorded the chaos, and shouted to no one and everyone “We could have just voted for a woman!”

But the line moved slowly because governance and systems are not abstract. It is queues and paperwork and who is allowed to move easily through the world. It is whether your time is respected. It is whether your dignity is protected.

Living your values sounds glamorous in theory. In practice, it is inconvenient.

It is reading past the headline.
It is choosing the documentary over the meme.
It is supporting the organizer instead of the spectacle.
It is voting in the off-year election.
It is asking harder questions when the easy narrative would suffice.

It is effort.

And effort costs something — time, comfort, ego, speed.

But the cost of not choosing better is always higher.

Better is rarely loud.
Better is rarely optimized for virality.
Better often asks more of us than we would like to give.

But better builds worlds where we do not stand in four-hour lines stressed and overwhelmed. 

Better builds industries where dignity is not retroactive.

Better builds systems resilient enough to hold our ambition without exploiting it.

Living one’s values is labor. It is maintenance. It is vigilance. It is refusing to outsource your conscience to convenience.

But that effort is never wasted.

Because every time we choose better — even when it is slower, harder, less flashy — we are rehearsing the world we say we want.

And rehearsal is how futures are built.

Watch

Upcoming

RxT Hacking Relief: Building Technology for Mutual Aid
At a moment when systems and institutions are falling short and leaving communities increasingly vulnerable, we’ll explore how everyday people are stepping in; using technology to build mutual aid, share resources, and support one another through climate, economic, and social hardship.

Wednesday, Mar 11 | Register here

Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.