by Tyra Banks
The punches: Unseen enemies come at ya from all sides. Throw some left hooks, some right jabs, some crosses to the side, some uppercuts while spinning around. For extra credit, some kickboxing kicks will up the ante.
The stroll: Never walk in a straight line. Zig, zag, stumble, and stutter-step.
The voice: Sometimes you’re yelling, sometimes you’re whispering, but you never stop talking to yourself. Throw in some threatening words every once in a while.
The body: Your head twitches, your arms twitch, your knees twitch. Everything is moving all the time.
Get home safely.
Carolyn: So a seventeen-year-old girl gets on a plane and goes to Paris and goes to audition after audition. They ask her to put on their clothes and walk. So she does. Their mouths fall open.
She books twenty-five shows in her first season.
Tyra: Twenty-five fashion shows. Magazine spreads up the yin-yang. The agents at City Models let me know this was standard. No biggie.
Carolyn: The agency told me twenty-five fashion shows and Tyra’s success was phenomenal and that most girls were lucky to book three shows. She was doing so well that the agency started to get scared that her head was gonna blow up like a hot air balloon, and they were calling me so much that I was starting to get in trouble at my job because my phone was ringing off the hook.
“Hello, this is Carolyn,” I’d answer.
“You must not tell ’er!” someone would scream at me through the phone, French accent crackling the wires all the way across the Atlantic as I practically dropped the receiver. “Tee-rah is such nice girl and elle must not know! We do not want her to changement! Tee-rah is so grounded! So normale! We want to keep ’er zat way!”
When I talked to Tyra, I would try to keep the excitement out of my voice. “That’s great, Ty,” I’d tell her when she related a story about how his reps pulled Yves Saint Laurent himself out of the back room so that he could see Tyra in person. “The agency said you’re doing just fine.”
Just pondering in Paris: on a break from a photo shoot, wondering if I made the right decision to come.
Tyra: “Did you book any shows?” my roommate at the models’ apartment would ask me.
“Oh yeah,” I’d say, lacing up my Tims. “Today I have Dior, YSL, and Chanel. Karl Lagerfeld has requested to have me come early so he can spend more time figuring out my looks. You wanna ride the Métro to Karl together?”
I didn’t understand—I thought it was like sharing notes in chemistry class or talking about what book you were gonna read for the book report. Instead, I was looking like a braggadocious bee-yotch.
But damn, I kept being told I was doing average and that all the new girls were doing this.
Touch-ups backstage in Paris at the Lolita Lempicka fashion show.
Carolyn: Tyra even booked the covers of two French magazines, one called 20 Ans, which is like Seventeen, and one called Jeune et Jolie, which means “young and happy” and is like the French Glamour. That was a shock for almost everybody, because back in the United States, no one was talking about putting a new black girl on the cover of anything!
Tyra: I only finally started to guess what was up toward the end of the season, when camera crews would bum-rush me backstage at shows, jabbing microphones in my face. “You are zee new girl. How does it feel to be zee new it girl, Tee-rah?”
It girl?
Say what?
I was still just tryna perfect my midnight lunatic walk and also stay focused in the daytime so I didn’t end up with regrets about not going to college.
Signing autographs after the shows in Paris. At the time, I had no idea why anyone wanted my autograph. Looking back, I have no idea why I'm holding a wig!
Carolyn: I was shocked when the agency offered to pay for me to fly to Paris to break the news of her success to Tyra (though I still wonder today if they took it outta her check as “expenses”), but I said yes immediately! Then I hopped on a plane and flew eleven hours so that I could stop lying to my daughter and tell her that she was a hit.
Ty met me at the airport, screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!” and waving her arm off. We hadn’t seen each other in so long and were hugging and crying, making a big, loud, corny American tourist scene that made everybody stare.
Tyra: And Mama was impressed because my French was poppin’!
Carolyn: It was! Somehow, even with all that fashion craziness, Tyra had found the time and headspace to learn French! I couldn’t believe it when we got in a taxi and she was giving the driver directions like she’d been born with escargot in her mouth. She knew the city, she knew the language, and she was lightin’ up the City of Light!
Tyra: I’d come a long way from, “Um, can I have an orange card?”
Carolyn: Even more, she knew the industry! Rocking my high heels and bedsheets, reading magazines sideways, watching runway VHS tapes till they started to flicker, and having a makeover spy kit in her backpack paid off, big-time.
Was I surprised?
Nah, baby.
Yes, it was her time for Paris. It was her moment. Sprinkled with a dash of luck.
Mama and me werking it backstage at the Claude Montana show in Paris when I was eighteen.
Mama was my backstage cheerleader and protector in the early days (not all the other models were happy to see a newcomer so successful). This was also one of my fave makeup looks EVER!
But without all of that crazy preparation, that moment would have flown past her like a cab in NYC not stopping for a brotha’man who’s headed uptown after five p.m. All she woulda felt was the breeze of opportunity passing her by.
So, no. I wasn’t surprised.
Not.
One.
Bit.
Tyra: Mama broke the news to me as gently as she could.
I hadn’t just survived my first season in Paris; I’d kicked its freakin’ butt. As amazing as this was, it brought a new dilemma. Since I had just deferred my admission to Loyola, it was still a dream that I could peek out the window and wave at occasionally, like a camp friend you lose touch with but don’t worry about ’cause you know you’ll see her again next summer and you’ll go right back to being BFFs.
To officially say I wasn’t going to college meant cutting that cord, and closing the door on my TV-producing dreams.
On the flip, modeling wouldn’t wait. I had a chance to be successful, do more than just pad my college fund, and build a real and legit career in fashion. If I blinked or even hesitated, that might just evaporate right in front of my eyes.
“Mama, what do I do?!” I wanted her to tell me what to do, to take the whole thing off my shoulders and make the decision easier, but as usual, she just sat there, this time flipping through a copy of Vogue Paris, turning the fashion spreads sideways so that she could locate the photographer’s name like she had all the time and not a care in the world. “Ty, baby”—flip, flip—“you know I ain’t gonna tell you what to do.” Flip.
So I made the choice (you know what I chose) and kept sleeping in my LMU sweatshirt every night.
Choosing to model meant I wasn’t going to college, but it didn’t mean I had to stop learning. In fact, it was the opposite. I wasn’t in a classroom, but modeling was a nonstop education and I soaked it up every which way. Cab rides were my French class. Runway shows were theater. Interviews were public speaking. Contract negotiations were business. Living in the model housing was sociology (and a little bit of social work). And for art history, Paris Fashion Week took place at the Louvre. (They have this little painting there, maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s called the Mona Lisa. . . . )
Seventeen years old, saluting the city with my portfolio in my high school backpack!
I hit the ground running in my Timberlands in Paris because I had taken the time to prepare, and that is a tactic that I’ve stuck
with my entire career. I never just assume that someone is going to come along and tell me everything I need to know, and you shouldn’t either. You have to do your research, boo. (My biggest pet peeve on Top Model is when a model wannabe can’t name three models who aren’t Victoria’s Secret Angels and thinks high fashion is J.Crew.) You gotta ask questions, and you gotta observe everyone and everything you can. Do your homework, even if you gotta assign it yourself. Then leave your ill-prepared competition in the highlighter dust, because they can’t keep up with your laser-focused Smize.
3
LIP GLOSS + PIZZA SAUCE = BOSS
So many bootyful memories from my first Sports Illustrated cover.
Tyra: Have you ever been to a place where every which way you looked, there were miles and miles of sand so soft and fine that it got stuck in all the wrong places? It was 1996, and Argentinian model Valeria Mazza and I were in South Africa, prancing and dancing our way across this sand for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. As I jumped up and down in my leopard-print bikini (roar!), I was worried about my gosh-darned cellulite. Yes, that’s what was running through my head.
Now, models today are Photoshopped till they all have glass ass (so shiny you could check your lipstick in the reflection on their upper thighs), but twenty years ago, this wasn’t the case, and when the issue dropped, I, with my stretch marks and the booty tooch, became the first black model to grace the cover. I shared it with cheetah-bikini-clad Argentinean blond Valeria, but I was still as happy as Vivian on that fire escape in Pretty Woman. (I love you, Julia!)
I musta been the only one who cared about my stretch marks.
Flash forward a year.
I’m snoozin’ away when my dreams are interrupted by a fire alarm. Actually, it’s the phone. Ringing right next to my head. The day before, I’d had a shoot that required a nighttime setting, so I’d shot until the sun started to creep up over the New York City skyline. Now I had my eye mask on and the curtains drawn, determined to get some shut-eye.
My first Sports Illustrated cover with Valeria Mazza in the sands of South Africa.
But that phone.
I grabbed the receiver and got it somewhat close to my mouth without even opening my eyes.
“Smelllo?”
“Tyra, it’s Elaine Farley. From Sports Illustrated.”
Now I’m listening. I sit up and rip the mask off, my eyes wide-open. My stomach tenses—if she’s calling me personally, instead of just sending a message through my agent, it must be something bad. I hope she’s not calling to tell me they’ve axed me from the issue. Because the last time she called me, a few months ago, she informed me they were scrapping the entire shoot I did in Bodrum, Turkey. I was crushed. That shoot I did in that quaint ancient town surrounded by beautiful men with the sharpest bone structure and the most soulful eyes was so artistic. But the good news that came out of Elaine’s mouth next was that they wanted to reshoot me on a beach. So I schlepped to the Bahamas to work with this new photographer named Russell James to reshoot my spread.
Russell was cute as hell (retired male model—cheekbones, laser-blue eyes, long hair, Aussie accent, flip-flop-wearing 24-7—actually he was more like fine as hell), but that’s all that was cute on that set ’cause his test pics we shot, Polaroids, looked to’ up from the flo’ up. Which means the final photos were gonna be wickitywack!
But I’m not bringing it up unless she does. I swallow.
“What’s up?” I ask her, trying to sound as calm and not disappointed as I can.
“Tyra, you got the cover.”
“Oh wow, coolio,” I say. “With who?”
“No one.”
“What? I’m by myself?”
“You’re by yourself.”
“No way!”
“Yes way!”
“No friggin’ way!”
“Yes friggin’ way!”
Not only was I going to be the first black model on the cover by herself, but this was also Sports Illustrated’s first dedicated swimsuit issue.
All of a sudden, I’m floating. It’s so surreal, it’s almost like I’m having an out-of-body experience. I’m looking at myself, sitting in bed, with the phone up to my ear and a look of utter disbelief on my face. Then, just as suddenly, I zoom back down into myself.
I thank Elaine. I hang up. I call Mama.
And that’s when I start screaming.
Flash forward to the issue release party back in New York. I’m with my mama and daddy (ya know how I roll—party girl for life, right?), and we pull up to the party at the Industria studio—the coolest photo studio at the time—a place I’d been many times before for photo shoots.
But this is the first time they’ve had a three-story-high backlit photo of me in a red polka-dot bikini out front, glowing like the bat signal for all of lower Manhattan to see. I didn’t walk into that party, I floated. I was Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and (caramel) Snow White all rolled into one. This was my mother-effing princess moment. I can say, without a hint of exaggeration, that it was one of the happiest days of my life (I remember I wore a Victoria’s Secret camel-colored tube dress).
Every which way I turned, journalists were coming up to me, asking how it felt. “Amazing!” I’d say. “I can’t believe this is happening; it’s incredible.”
Those answers were true.
But they weren’t my whole story.
Then a reporter from BET came up to me. “So how does it feel to be the first black model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Tyra?”
And that, that right there, was when I lost it. I started crying on their camera and couldn’t stop (in fact, I’m crying right now, just thinking about it). I started telling them how I knew this moment was bigger than me, that I knew there were little black girls who were gonna see me on this cover and think that they were beautiful, too. They were gonna look at my photos and think, “That could be me someday.”
This was history making. Yeah, it was a big moment for me and my career, but it was way bigger than that. It symbolized the beginning of a shift in thinking, where black models were standing front and center in a mass Americana way, after years of being crammed on the sexy-girl-next-door sidelines.
Makin’ history in an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny red polka-dot bikini as the first black model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
Carolyn: When I was managing Tyra’s career, I had agents tell me that I was the only parent they’d ever seen turn down opportunities for their child to make big money.
But Tyra’s career was never just about money. It was also about breaking down barriers as a black model.
There were so many nos delivered, faxed, left on voice mail, FedExed, and snail-mailed through the USPS, and yes, those nos stung. But they were also a challenge—and about the only thing Tyra and I love more than ice cream is a challenge.
Tyra: As a kid, I went to the International Children’s School (ICS) in Los Angeles, where the students were as L.A. as the Lakers but the teachers came from all over the world. My gymnastics teacher was Sri Lankan, my ballet teacher was French, my fourth-grade teacher was from Belize, and on and on. We were always learning about other cultures, and to this day, I still know how to do a Sri Lankan candle dance, without burning my arms, that I learned when I was in the third grade. Thanks, Ms. Gunasekera!
At ICS, most of the students were black, proud, and saying it loud. If you were a little black boy and could not recite Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech by heart, then forget you. It didn’t matter how cute you were, how fast you could run, or how many Members Only jackets you had—you were a loser and weren’t ever gonna amount to anything in life. At least, that’s how it felt.
Every February, when Black History Month rolled around, we’d have a big assembly for the whole school and all the parents. In the fourth gr
ade, I was out-of-my-mind excited to do my own speech, memorized by heart, about Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America pageant winner. I was gonna talk about how much her win meant for the community and how talented I thought she was (I was gonna leave out the part about how everyone told me I looked like her, although that had me extra excited).
The day of the assembly, my best friend, Kenya Barris, and I are standing offstage, trying to one-up each other about who’s gonna do better. I roll my eyes at Kenya. He’s a boy, so he thinks he’s gonna do better with his Dr. King speech, but I’m a girl, so I’m really gonna do better. We both know it.
The principal calls my name and I walk out there on that auditorium stage, and even though the lights are shining in my face, I can still see Mama in the crowd, and she’s smiling so big I can see her teeth all the way across the auditorium.
Carolyn: Tyra looooooved her some Vanessa Williams. In fact, I love her, too. Years later, we’d watch that “The Right Stuff” video (the one with the fine-looking French man sippin’ champagne in a bolo tie) over and over again, thinking “Nah nah nah nah, yeah yeah yeah. You go, V. Get it, girl.”
Tyra wrote her Vanessa speech and would recite it to me over and over again. I’d help her with the inflections and give her advice about how to move around the stage and connect with the audience.
My clique of girlfriends came to the assembly with me, and I was braggin’ it up as we sat down. “You don’t know what you’re about to hear and see, honey,” I said. “TyTy is gonna blow everyone’s minds!” I even leaned over to tell some strangers sitting in the row behind that my daughter was coming up next.
When Tyra came out onstage, she looked so cute in her little organza dress with a bow in her hair. As soon as she stepped up to the microphone, I sat up straight in my chair, just waiting. . . .
