Bianca and I had been eagerly waiting for our makeovers, or “New Weave Day,” as we called it, from day one. “You better be ready,” she told me. “It’s not just Black girls getting weaves anymore; they do them on white girls now too. New Weave Day could be for anyone. I bet I’m getting long, dark hair.”
“You would look so good with that. Maybe like Naomi Campbell hair,” I said. “I hope they make me blonde; I’ve always wanted blonde hair.”
“They might give you short hair. They love your face. They always go short when someone has a good face.”
“Oooh, that would be so cool.”
“Really?” she asked, surprised. “I do not want them cutting all my hair off.”
I’d always wanted to be a person who drastically changed their hair on a whim; I’d just never had the means. I love the drama of a big hair reveal: walking into a room looking like a completely different person as though it were nothing and hearing, “Oh my gosh, your hair!”
A few months before going on the show, I dated a vaguely attractive but very boring man. The sex was deeply unsatisfying. As boring as he was, one minor detail intrigued me. At the end of his penis was a large, round piercing. When I first saw it, I was shocked.
“Do you not like it?” he asked.
“No, no, I’m just surprised, that’s all. I guess I didn’t expect that you would have a piercing,” I said.
“Yeah, I don’t know, I just decided to do it one day.”
“I get that,” I said. “Sometimes I just want to cut all my hair off or dye it a crazy color or something.”
“Oh God,” he said, pulling a face. “If you cut your hair off, I wouldn’t even want to talk to you.”
Don’t threaten me with a good time, I thought before leaving.
Just before I left to film the show, my new boyfriend and I laughed about the man who wouldn’t talk to me if I cut my hair. It became a running inside joke.
“They might, you know,” I told him. “If I go on this show, they might cut all my hair off. You’d have to put your money where your mouth is.”
“I promise I will still want to talk to you if you cut your hair.”
And now, here I was, putting my money where my mouth was in a mansion, surrounded by the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen, desperately waiting for the show to change our hair and our lives. Every time Tyra Mail appeared, Bianca and I would hold hands and chant in a whisper, “New Weave Day, New Weave Day, New Weave Day,” as a girl cracked open the card to read it. No matter what the cryptic message said, we would try to figure out a way that message could possibly be interpreted as a makeover.
Then finally, the Tyra Mail we were waiting for arrived.
“‘Like a butterfly, a true Top Model must be willing to undergo a little … metamorphosis,’” read Jenah, her eyes lighting up.
There was no mistaking that. New Weave Day was here. We all screamed with excitement, except for Chantal, who looked nervous and kissed her long, perfect blond hair good-bye.
The makeovers were a much-needed respite from my now-constant anxiety. Here was something where I didn’t have to wonder what I was supposed to do or say, I just had to show up and sit in the salon chair. I’d surrendered myself to the producers completely; I was theirs, body, mind, and hair.
A producer confirmed what we suspected when he told us to pack a hat or a scarf to wear on our heads during interviews tomorrow “just in case.”
The next morning, we arrived at the Ken Paves Salon with our hats, scarves, and interview outfits carefully stowed away in our oversize purses. There was even more commotion and waiting around than usual because Miss J, Mr. Jay, and Tyra all had to be made up, lit, and ready. But we didn’t mind, because we got to read the magazines in the salon waiting area. We’d been away from anything connected to the outside world for so long. We immediately started devouring them in contented silence. Reading a gossip rag in a fancy L.A. salon hit different from reading it in my dentist’s office back home, 3,000 miles away from all the celebrities sprawled across the pages.
After they got us out and into position, they told us to say hi to the Jays as they walked in and to scream when Tyra walked in behind them.
The three of them stood next to a screen that displayed our Polaroid pictures from casting. I winced a little when my photo came up. That girl had no idea how to take a good photo — who was she? As Tyra described our makeover, the picture would morph into a CGI’d picture of what was going to happen to us. One by one, we watched as our faces transformed into what Tyra,
Mr. Jay, and Miss J declared Real Models. I saw my hair get blonder and shorter until it was almost a pixie cut. I gasped and squeaked with excitement. It was just like Rihanna’s pixie. It looked like the haircut sported by openly gay women I’d admired from afar in college, wondering what it would be like to be them, to be with them. It looked punk. I couldn’t wait to become whoever that person was in the new picture.
Hartshorne’s ANTM promo photo; Hartshorne today. From left: Photo: The CWPhoto: Mindy Tucker
Hartshorne’s ANTM promo photo; Hartshorne today. From left: Photo: The CWPhoto: Mindy Tucker
Everyone else seemed pretty excited about their makeovers, and there weren’t any drastic changes planned. Until they got to Heather. They showed her long black hair turning into a spiky pixie-meets-mohawk hairstyle. All our heads swiveled as fast as they could to take in her reaction.
“Ahhhh!” she screamed gleefully. “I love it!”
Tyra and Mr. Jay looked like they’d swallowed their tongues.
“She looked completely flabbergasted … She’s expecting me to completely freak out because, oh my God, this is a huge change for the autistic girl,” Heather recalled with glee.
“Well … we’re — we’re not really doing that, actually,” said Tyra, and then she explained that, in reality, they weren’t going to change her hair at all. The moment was so uncomfortable and awkward Tyra had to rerecord most of the audio in a voice-over later. When the show aired, you’d never know they tried to punk the autistic girl with a faux-hawk.
The hairstylists took us in shifts, so some of us got right into salon chairs and some of us got more time to sit around and read magazines. It was the first time in weeks that I felt like myself: excitable, silly, and a little impulsive. I couldn’t wait to go home and walk into a room looking like a totally different person and hear those magic words: “Your hair!”
I looked down at my long brown hair and remembered reading something about an organization called Locks of Love where you could donate your hair to be used for wigs for cancer patients if it was long and untreated enough. I went up to a hairstylist and asked, “Is my hair long enough to donate to Locks of Love?”
“Let me see,” she said, grabbing my ponytail and pulling my hair out. “Yeah, I think it is. You want to do that?”
“Yes, please!”
They went and asked a producer, and it was decided. Ken Paves himself would cut my ponytail off and then mail it in. As they sat me down in the chair, the cameras surrounded me, and Ken said, “Are you ready? This is a really great thing you’re doing. Someone is going to love this hair.”
The feeling of being on camera was so warm and comforting until suddenly it felt slimy. Was I doing this just for airtime? I told myself that even if I wasn’t on the show, eventually I would have cut all my hair off and donated it to Locks of Love. I hoped it was true.
“Are you nervous about having short hair?” asked Ken.
“No,” I said. “I’ve actually always wanted it, but my mom has short hair, and I was afraid I’d look too much like her.”
“You don’t want to look like your mom?” said Ken teasingly.
“Oh, no,” I said hurriedly. “I look so much like my mom, like, exactly like her.”
“Then she must be beautiful,” he said.
“She is. People always say we look like sisters, which I know is supposed to be a compliment for her, but I’m always like … does that mean I look old? I guess it’s not that I don’t want to look like my mom, it’s that I don’t want to look like a mom, you know? Like a soccer mom.”
“I don’t think you’re going to look like a mom. I’ll make it super edgy. I’ll even dye your eyebrows. That’s such a model thing.”
Soon enough, I was standing up from the chair, running my hands over my new short hair and my exposed neck, feeling like a real model.
When it was my turn to shoot, I walked to the set and saw the wardrobe table, which looked unusual. There were no outfits, no clothes of any kind. Instead, we would all be wearing different brightly colored strips of fabric that the stylists, Masha and Anda, would be wrapping around us in elaborate knots and drapes. Mine were indigo.
“This is going to look so hot with your hair and your eyes,” said Anda or possibly Masha as she wrapped fabric around my waist and threaded it through my legs.
“So hot,” agreed Masha or possibly Anda, down at my feet, having just rubbed my legs with baby oil.
I felt hot. I felt tan and leggy and blond and shiny and fucking hot. I began shooting with the photographer and really went for it, jumping at every click of the camera. I lunged and really put those thin, limp strips of cloth to the test.
“Yes!” said the photographer. “More!”
“I don’t want to pop a boob!”
“Girl, don’t even worry about it,” they said. “We can edit out a little nipple in post. Just keep the straps somewhere in the vicinity.”
Almost immediately my boob popped out and I just put it back in, like I was fixing a piece of machinery. I smiled to myself, thinking how lucky I was to be in a place where my inappropriate humor and wayward tits were accepted as normal. Maybe I could find a way to be myself on the show, my old self, the preshow Sarah.
When they interviewed me about it, the producer seemed surprised at how excited I was.
“How do you feel about such a drastic change?” he asked.
“Amazing. I’ve always wanted short hair.”
“Your hair was so long before, weren’t you a little bit sad to see it all go?”
“No, honestly, I wasn’t sad at all about cutting all my hair off. I’ve always wanted to go short! And I got to donate it to a good cause!” I hoped he’d ask more about Locks of Love and make me look altruistic.
“Are you worried it’s going to look masculine? Or do you think it’s fierce?”
“Honestly, I’m not worried about short hair making me look masculine at all, I think especially because I have such a curvy body. I love having an edgier look. It’s so fierce.”
“Are you worried that this will make you look even curvier? That maybe you’ll look more plus-size?”
“Well, I hadn’t been worried about looking curvier with this haircut, but I kind of am now,” I said, a little defeated. I felt Show Sarah, with all her new anxieties, pouring back into me. Worried about every move she made. Bracing for moments like this. I suddenly felt tired.
“Were you nervous about wearing something so revealing at the photo shoot?”
“I wasn’t nervous about wearing something revealing at the photo shoot,” I answered, carefully bringing the question into my answer. “I don’t know, I guess I just figured it was part of the job. I wouldn’t even care about posing naked.”
“But weren’t you worried, as the plus-size contestant, about baring your stomach? And showing so much skin?” he asked.
“Honestly, I was more worried about my boob popping out at the photo shoot than showing so much skin, but don’t worry, it totally did,” I quipped, trying to hide that I was, in fact, crestfallen. I didn’t care about being naked or revealed as sexual. I cared about being revealed as fat and sad. Revealed to be an Other. Less than because I was more than. I smiled politely and wanted to throw up or at least walk away. But I didn’t get to say when the interview was done.
“Do you think your makeover is going to give you an advantage over the other girls?”
God no, I thought but did not say. I have no advantage over the other girls. I feel like slime on the bottom of someone’s shoe.
“I don’t know if my makeover will give me an advantage over the other girls, but I do think I’m lucky because … I really like it. It sucks when you don’t like your hair, so I’m just glad I got one I liked” is what I actually said.
“So, do you think Bianca is at a disadvantage? That she’ll do worse?”
I walked right into that one.
“I think Bianca is going to be fine. She’s so gorgeous, and honestly, I kind of love how she looks with a shaved head. She looks like such a model.”
“So would you say that Bianca is overreacting to her makeover?”
“I don’t think Bianca is overreacting at all. This has been a crazy stressful day for all of us. And, I mean, I would not be okay if they shaved my head, but my mom says my head is shaped funny because I was a C-section baby, so that’s a whole other story.”
He chuckled, but I could tell he wasn’t happy with my answer.
I wondered what the right one would have been. Did he really expect me to kick Bianca when she was down? I’d been conditioned and raised to always be diplomatic and nice, and suddenly that felt like a weakness.
I walked back to the salon, pulling my clothes around myself self-consciously. When I got back to the waiting area, the vibe was off. I sat down.
“What’s up?” I asked Bianca.
She looked around and then leaned in close to whisper: “Victoria found a piece of paper that, like, had a list of our names on it and then what our personalities were and how they wanted to edit us.”
“Huh,” I said. That didn’t surprise me. Of course there would be a plan for how we would be edited and portrayed. We were the characters of this season, after all. In his interview with Oliver TwiXt, Nigel Barker repeatedly and reflexively referred to the contestants as “characters” before correcting himself: “I mean girls.” So it made sense to me that somewhere, people were crafting our public-facing personas out of all the footage they had. “Do you know what it said? What did it say about you? Or about me?”
“I don’t know, she didn’t say,” said Bianca.
Jenah walked in. “Did you hear?” we asked her.
“Yeah,” she said conspiratorially. “Crazy.”
“I know they’re going to make me the villain,” said Bianca. “I know who I am.”
“Man,” I said. “I have no idea who I am.”
“The producers know,” said Jenah, and we all nodded.
I felt like this information was washing over me without really sinking in. Like it was something I should care about, even be angry about, but I felt nothing except exhaustion.
I asked David St. John, who was a supervising producer on our cycle and did most of the interviewing, about the possibility of Victoria finding something like that.
“No,” he said unequivocally. “We had a very strong policy against producers carrying paperwork like that around on set.”
After my elimination episode aired, I was free to try my hand at a modeling career. To prepare, I’d made a list of New York City agencies that represented plus-size models, and the second I was legally allowed, I started to submit applications and go to open calls. I met Nolé Marin, a former ANTM judge who owned an agency, at a fashion-show competition we were both judging, and he agreed to meet with me.
I went to his office in midtown Manhattan and sat on a plush leopard-print chair. He sat down opposite me, hands in his lap, lips pursed, looking me up and down.
“I mean, first things first, you need to lose about 30 pounds,” he told me. I stared at his round frame. “Oh, no, sorry, I know — I want to be a plus-size model,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, confused. “I mean, have you thought about just losing 30 pounds?”
I smiled and shrugged.
“My agency doesn’t do plus-size girls, but I can put in a good word at Wilhelmina if you want. They have the best curve board around.”
“That would be great!” I said excitedly, filing away the knowledge that “curve” was another word for “plus-size.” “But I should warn you,” he said, “nobody is going to sign a plus-size model with short hair.”
He was right. I met with agent after agent, and they all said some version of the same thing: “Come back when your hair is longer.” Including Wilhelmina. None of them said I was too thin. None of them seemed to care much about Top Model either, except as an explanation for why my hair was too short. One agent put it this way: “We want fat, happy girls with fat, happy teeth and hair.” I thought back to all the women in my mom’s Newport News catalogues.
So I kept working, saved up my money, and got my teeth whitened. And then my boyfriend gifted me hair extensions. I dropped out of school and moved in with him to save money and to really give modeling a shot. I got a job working at a chiropractors’ office with a flexible enough schedule for me to go to photo shoots and castings.
I was terrified to tell my grandfather that I was leaving school, but he surprised me.
“This is a bizarre opportunity you’ve stumbled into,” he said.
“Yeah, and I want to make the most of it,” I said eagerly.
“Well, I think that’s wise, I do,” he reassured me. “School will always be there for you. And modeling certainly won’t be there forever.”
“I don’t want to do this forever,” I said.
“And you can’t. There will be an expiration date. Just remember that.”
Excerpted From the book YOU WANNA BE ON TOP?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America’s Next Top Model. Copyright 2025 by Sarah Hartshorne. Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
