Former ‘America’s Next Top Model’ Winner Naima Mora Reveals Ford Models Dropped Her After She Gained Weight And Shaved Her Head: “I Didn’t Fit The Industry Standard”

Previous America’s Next Top Model winner Naima Mora is spilling “all the tea” on winning the show’s Cycle 4 in 2005, and the misconceptions both she and fans at home likely had about her winnings.

Replying to a fan on TikTok, she explained that she “got a year(-long) contract with Covergirl Cosmetics, which was a dream client,” but described her promised contract with Ford Models as “so, so challenging.”

“At the time, fashion was very strict on maintaining weight for models. Keep in mind this was 2005 [and] 2006. So after the show, I gained a lot of weight, and Ford Models was very upset about it,” she alleged.

She then proceeded to discuss the mohawk she sported at the time, which she loved and deemed as “one of the ways that [she has] influenced pop culture just being[herself].” However, Ford Models didn’t feel the same way, she claimed.

“They didn’t like my haircut, they didn’t like that I gained weight,” Mora alleged. “They put a lot of pressure on me to grow out my hair and to be very, very thin, like a size 0. I am naturally a size 2 [or] 4, but they wanted me to be down to a size 0 [or] 00, which was very standard at the time for high fashion. And I couldn’t do it.”

Being a self-proclaimed “rebel,” Mora alleged that “Ford Models was very disappointed in working with [her] because [she] didn’t fit the industry standard and the status quo of what a model and what ‘beautiful’ looked like at the time.”

@naimamora

Replying to @Kimbo Gotti stay tuned for more tea! 1st of video answering all your questions on winning #ANTM

♬ original sound – Naima Mora

“So I shaved my head without asking my booker about it and that same day they dropped me,” she claimed. “So working with Ford Models was actually very challenging for me to express myself in my most authentic way.”

While she admitted that she technically received everything she was promised, she noted how it didn’t necessarily work out for her benefit. She also acknowledged that host Tyra Banks “didn’t anticipate any of this.”

“What I appreciate about working with Tyra is that she believed in me and the way I represented myself to the world,” she said. “However, the agency, when they signed the contract with ANTM, that was before they knew that I was going to win the show.”

Another low blow Mora discovered was the third part of her alleged reward, an $100,000 grand prize, had a 40-60% “prize tax.”

“So, that $100,000, at the end of the day after taxes, was a little less than half of that,” she said.

While she said the show “allowed [her] to work with amazing clients,” she claimed that at the time, reality TV was “very taboo,” which prevented her from other opportunities that contestants on more recent seasons may have been able to pursue.

“With that being said, I loved my experience on America’s Next Top Model,” she added. “Would I do it again? Another reality TV show? No!”

Decider has reached out to reps for Ford Models for comment.