While some studies of television content have found an increase in the number of women and people of color represented over time and on certain networks, those representations must be thoroughly analyzed and scrutinized. In my close textual analysis of season six of America's Next Top Model, I found that superficial racial diversity offers the illusion that racial inequalities have already been resolved and advances a dangerous depoliticization of race. The ways in which the show's judges devalue one African American contestant's Southern accent, which they insist is inappropriate and unmarketable, is indicative of the show's overall commitment to producing models who display and uphold normative upper class whiteness. On ANTM, racial issues only appear as entertaining interpersonal conflict and the show further offers a white hegemonic colorblind position by labeling the beauty of the white models "all-American" and representing the racial identity of models of color as a source of exotic beauty and as a highly marketable trait.The erasure of the politics of race and its relegation to the domain of interpersonal drama on the show is also tied to a project of normalizing and legitimating neoliberalism through cultural tropes and narratives. Successful ANTM contestants are ideal neoliberal citizens: they prove the facility of overcoming class and race disadvantages; they take responsibility for themselves; and they work hard and happily endure hardship

Although reality TV offers more representations of women and racial diversity than most other mainstream television, there are still few studies that investigate gendered racial representation in the genre. I argue that the abundance of discourses about feminine racialization on America's Next Top Model signals a new neoliberal rhetoric of race in popular culture in which instead of silently and superficially representing racial difference, the show's explicit discussions about race and racialized identity transformations are promoted as a valuable commodity. In particular, African American model Danielle's struggle to change her rural Southern accent is a key narrative arc on the show. Positioning feminine racialization as a lucrative flexible personal asset, the show ensures that the women of color are doubly commodified—for their eroticized physical attractiveness and for their marketable personal narratives of racial self-transformation. I contend that the racial rhetoric of Top Model makes race hyper-visible as a malleable commodity and confirms the neoliberal fantasy of the structural irrelevance of race and class in the US by satisfying the demand for recognizable tropes of racialized feminine beauty that only reference hardship or disadvantage as something that can be overcome through hard work.