It was a big moment when Angelea Preston won Season 17 of America’s Next Top Model: All Stars in the summer of 2011. Preston, who was 25 years old, was ecstatic because it had taken her competing three times in other fashion TV shows to finally win. At the time, the prize for first place included a fashion campaign for Express, an impressive appearance in Vogue Italia, a $100,000 Cover Girl contract and a guest correspondent gig on Extra, Bustle reports. While everything was going great, it would eventually all come crashing down.
After ANTM producers discovered that she’d briefly worked as an escort at some point, all of her prizes were revoked and fans never got to see her victory. In the season finale, Tyra Banks, the top host of the show, informed viewers that Preston had been disqualified and her spot would be replaced by Lisa D’Amato, another model on the show. At the time, Banks noted that Preston’s disqualification hinged on “unusual circumstances,” but what she did not share was the fact that the discovery that judges made about Preston was immediately grounds for her termination as a winner on the show.
Following her disqualification, Preston’s name was shrouded in shame, and in a recent interview with Bustle, she shared what really happened.
Before her stint with ANTM, Preston had met a man with whom she had developed a toxic relationship, and his controlling and domineering approach forcefully veered her into escorting against her will. While Preston has shared her story candidly all these years later, many people are pointing out the seeming hypocrisy of the ANTM franchise as a whole. Over the years, many stories have come out about the high-fashion industry and it’s notoriety for being a major escorting hub.
Many models have shared stories about how they were approached by rich and powerful men who offered them a stable career and money in exchange for sex. The testimony of many has shown that there is a dark and seedy undercurrent to the fashion world that is not often openly discussed. Many white models consistently get gigs despite a checkered past and a voluntary identification as escorts; Preston lost everything she earned on ANTM even though she was forced into escorting.
Because of the fashion industry’s vastly unregulated nature, there is often inadequate protection for working models, and this almost always pushes models into dangerous and life-threatening situations. The lack of labor unions in the fashion world is also an issue, and without that, there is a chance that the Agelea Prestons of the world are always going to be vulnerable and exposed. According to Anne Elizabeth Moore, the author of Threadbare: Clothes, Sex & Trafficking, “[There’s this idea] that you’re lucky to be a model so that people who start thinking about or advocating for their rights are shamed into silencing themselves almost immediately.”