The program is watched by high numbers of preteen and adolescent girls. Regular exposure to smoking on television and in movies increases a child’s risk for trying cigarettes and becoming a smoker, studies show.
Supermodel Tyra Banks is Executive producer of America’s Next Top Model
Ms. Banks, along with co-executive producer Ken Mok, had assured through a spokesman that they were concerned about the impact the smoking models could have on young viewers.
“This is a no-smoking cycle,’’ Ms. Banks told the contestants, who live together and are eliminated one by one depending on their performance in various modeling activities. “So many young girls are fans of America’s Next Top Model, and right now so many young girls are fans of you. If they see their idol puffing and smoking a cigarette, what does that make them think? Wow, she’s smoking, that’s cool. So that’s why smoking will be banned. It’s over.”
The lecture came after an odd segment in which the girls were photographed holding cigarettes in glamorous poses. But then some startling graphics reflected the damage of smoking. The girls were shown coughing up blood, with facial tumors or tracheotomy holes in their necks, bald from chemotherapy and wrinkled from premature aging.
