What America's Next Top Model taught me

See reality tv is educational

I was an America’s Next Top Model (‘ANTM’) aficionado. This was in the early 2000’s, so long ago that to watch it, I had to rent the DVDs from Blockbuster.

God, I loved that show. It was so good.

Also: deeply problematic. But when you're living in an era where you don’t know better, you can feel vaguely unsettled (the body stuff, some racial stuff), without knowing why—and still watch 12 episodes in a row.

(Manual filter)

One thing that ANTM was very committed to was the idea of commitment.

Each season, they’d give the models wild makeovers—some were great, others seemed designed purely to make people cry.

There were challenges that involved walking the runway in stilts, wearing outfits made of meat and kissing mannequins.

Regardless of what was happening, everything always circled back to the same question:

How bad do you want this? What are you willing to do?

There’s one moment I’ve never forgotten. A contestant was about to be eliminated and in last-ditch effort to stay, she looked at Tyra Banks and said:

‘I’ll do anything to be a top model.’

Tyra immediately cut her off. You never really knew what would make Tyra mad (logical things rarely did), but she was furious.

She looked the contestant in the eye and said,

‘Don’t say, I’ll do anything... Say, I’ll do everything.'

Honestly I’ve been thinking about that line for 20 years. It might be one of the best reframes I’ve ever heard. Because switching that one word is so impactful.

‘Anything’ = desperate. It’s got pick me energy

‘Everything’ = determined. It’s more like, watch what I do next

It’s basically a shift from obsessing over what’s out of your control to anchoring in what’s within your power, which means…

It’s Stoicism.

I used to think Stoicism was just for people who wake up at 4am, take ice baths, and journal about mortality. But turns out it's actually one of the most sanity-saving tools out there for creative people.

At its core, Stoicism is about:

• Focusing on what you can control

• Letting go of what you can’t

• Doing the work anyway

Which is… basically the entire writing process.

If writing currently feels like a ANTM challenge—high stakes and high pressure and your brain unhelpfully yelling, ‘This is your one and only shot! Do not stuff it up!’—my mini course The Inner Game of Writing might help.

It’s got a lesson on Stoicism called ‘You have no control over whether other people like your work',’ plus 11 others. Check it out here.

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Me, elsewhere

• I did an interview with Cassy Polimeni recently, as part of her ‘Meet the Creator’ series. It (the series) is excellent. Check out the issue before mine, which features Fiona Hardy, who’s latest funny, crime novel ‘Unbury the Dead’ is one of my fave books this year

• The launch for my book, The Girl Who Cried Bird is coming up and comedian JACK HEATH is the launcher — please come, otherwise it will be my, my husband, kids and mum + a lot of cupcakes (bookings here)

• I’m still collecting stories about teeth — if you’ve got one, I’d love to hear it

Bye for now,

Katherine