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‘Top Model’ Winner Shares Disturbing Details of the Show’s Infamous Photoshoots

The model spoke candidly about the show’s “unnerving” treatment of contestants.

Roosa RahkonenEditorial Intern, The Looker

PublishedMar 12, 2026, 6:04 PM EDT

UpdatedMar 12, 2026, 6:15 PM EDT

Updated Mar 12, 2026, 6:15 PM EDTPublished Mar 12, 2026, 6:04 PM EDT

The winner of the second season of America’s Next Top Model now says some of the show’s photoshoots made her “highly uncomfortable.”

Yoanna House, 45, recalled her time on the modeling competition reality show on the Daily Beast’s Obsessed: The Podcast with Kevin Fallon.

House’s season, which the show refers to as “cycles,” premiered on January 13, 2004—more than 20 years before A would face its current reckoning in back-to-back documentaries released by Netflix and E!. House was just 23 when she filmed and won Cycle 2.

“There was a couple shoots that made me highly uncomfortable,” House said.

The former reality star, who appears in the newly released E! Entertainment documentary series Dirty Rotten Scandals, shared details of her experiences on the show.

“One was the body paint and walking around naked with male models,” she told Fallon, referencing the season’s first photoshoot.

The shoot, called “Adam and Eve with Sequins and Paint,” paired the contestants with male models and had them pose in “outfits” consisting almost entirely of body paint.

“I was uncomfortable with how much scrutiny I was already receiving about my body. And then to be having to walk around naked in a room full of not only production, but fashion photographers, styling...” she said, adding, “It was difficult. It was challenging for me.”

The show repeated the risque body-paint theme in multiple photoshoots throughout its run.

“Another shoot I thought was absolutely ridiculous was the underwater shoot,” House said of the shoot in episode five. Titled “Quench underwater,” the shoot involved models posing inside a fish tank.

“I was like, what are we doing here? I’m a Florida girl, but my goodness, you know,” she said.

House jokingly said she “loved” filming a music video in the season’s eighth episode for “Shake Ya Body,” a song by host and creator, Tyra Banks.

Banks, now 52, instructed the six remaining contestants to shoot a music video in which they walked a runway and performed choreography.

A major moment in the episode saw House suffer a dramatic fall due to the impractical footwear in her assigned outfit. “I fell down and I was in these crazy platforms,” she recalled, “and I just I couldn’t keep up with it.”

The episode remains a fan-favorite, but it has a less-positive association for House.

“People are tuning in on YouTube and rewatching it,” she said, admitting that she will “literally cringe any time someone mentions it.”

“I do get teased by one of my closest friends. She’s got a great sense of humor. She’ll like, play the song, and I’m like ‘stop,’” House said, laughing.

“What my friend says is, ‘Have you still gotten your residual check from Tyra’s ‘Shake Ya Body’?’ No, I have not,” she said.

Beyond the discomfort she experienced during shoots and challenges, filming the TV show also took a toll on her mental health.

“I do think that they used our stories and vulnerability to weaponize and to kind of watch us kind of squirm,” House said on the Obsessed podcast.

She continued, “The situation was sometimes unnerving. To be in a situation where you’re sharing such tight quarters competitively, but then also trying to navigate not being able to open windows, not being able to have a cell phone, not being able to listen to music.”

“There was a lot of promises to us girls. When I had signed on, I said, ‘Am I going to be able to go work out regularly? Am I going to be able to have access to food that’s actually going to nourish?’ And none of that was given to us,” House said, adding," I was too quick to trust. And I was very naive."

Roosa RahkonenEditorial Intern, The Looker

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