Review: You Wanna Be on Top?

Dear Constant Reader, In 2007 one of our troupe members needed to take the summer off. Only a few of us knew what she was going to be doing and we had to keep quiet about it. In the fall we could finally reveal that she was a contestant on America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 9. She has shared a little of the behind the scenes with us over the years, but now she’s letting everyone know what happened on ANTM in her new book You Wanna Be on Top? A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America’s Next Top Model by Sarah Hartshorne, 2025. Sarah was a student at Boston University when America’s Next Top Model held a local casting call. She didn’t expect much, given the thousands of women who tried out, but was one of the finalists who ended up in the Model House as the sole plus-sized model (called “real sized” on the show). The story that unfolds in a blow-by-blow accounting is simply bonkers. The production staff were uncaring at best and cruel at worst. The young women — and…