by Tyra Banks
And straight up: I do not think I would have been able to make such a broad impact if I had stayed in high fashion. When I was first told to lose weight—a lot of weight—it felt like my world was ending. This was the first major pain point in my career (well not the first first; I’ll save that living hell for another book), and thank God I had Mama there to help me pivot and go in a new direction. When one door of opportunity slams shut in your face, you don’t turn around and go home, boo. Oh, no. You just go through that side door, and if that’s closed, go through the back door, the cellar door, the attic—just get in the damn house!
Success is not a straight line. It’s more like the PCH (that’s the Pacific Coast Highway for you peeps who are not familiar with the Los Angeles coast): There are all sorts of curves and switchbacks and roadblocks and traffic jams and high cliffs and falling rocks, and you’ll fall right into the Pacific Ocean if you’re too busy staring at the scenery to drive. The important thing is to keep your eyes on the road and keep going. Stay focused. Don’t stop. Don’t turn back. And don’t forget to enjoy the wild ride.
I believe in destiny, but too many people treat destiny like it’s the po-po locking them up.
We all know those people who just give up as soon as something gets hard. “Well! I guess that wasn’t in the stars/in the cards/meant to be/my path, so guess I’ll just stop trying.” They’d rather tell themselves that losing is their destiny and success is out of their control.
Wrong. (Where is that America’s Got Talent red buzzer when I need it?)
I learned that from watching (drumroll, please!) my own mother-friggin’ mama!
There were many ways in which my mother was a victim. She went through abusive relationships, she got taken advantage of, she got pregnant young, she was discriminated against, she was poor, she was black, she had no college degree, she was female. . . . The list goes on. But did she ever think of herself as a victim? Not for a damn second. If there was a Miss I Control My Destiny pageant, Carolyn London would have done a mind-blowing dance in the talent contest, had you ROTFLMAO with the I-can’t-believe-she-just-said-that stuff she went ahead and said in the interview, and played the body accordion in the swimsuit competition. She would have won by miles and then never given up that crown. No matter what happened to her, she refused to accept it as her fate, and she refused to let it define who she was.
Carolyn: It’s easy to say woe is me and go back to bed. It’s comfortable and cozy in those flannel sheets where you get to just blame other people for everything that’s gone wrong in your life. It is harder to get up and fight when life’s drama stares you in the face. Did you hear what I said? Drama. Not trauma. Trauma is an uncontrollable circumstance that happens to you and requires therapy, counseling, and medical and/or psychological treatment.
Drama is an excuse.
Tyra: And me and Mama, we ain’t the kinda girls who make excuses. So when destiny starts to push at you, that is your sign to push back at it. You push back, and you show that bitch who’s bawse. Take off your earrings and get your girl to hold your purse if that’s what you gotta do, ’cause you ain’t going down without a fight.
And know that no matter what, you at least got two people in your corner backing you up: me and Mama. And we know when to come out swinging! If a door slams in your face, we’ll tell you to look for the window. If the window’s shut, well then, boo, you got elbows, don’t you? Break that ish!
Climb, crawl, leapfrog, high-jump, pole-vault, catapult—do whatever you gotta do to get and stay where you need to be. And if you get a few scrapes and bruises along the way, cherish them. Those are your battle scars. They show that you put in some work, rolled with the punches, and learned a whole hell of a lot along the way.
Now, go get ’em, Tygers.
(Though, if there are any little girls or boys out there planning to do a speech on me, can I give you a word of advice? Write it down. That stuff is hard to remember. Actually, forget the script and speak from your fierce heart. And don’t forget to Smize.)
4
AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A PERIOD PARTY
Carolyn: I was so naive, so very naive, about the birds and the bees and . . . the blood. Even when I was pregnant with a baby growing in my belly, I still barely understood how that baby got there. My own mama never taught me about the facts of life (much less the rumors), so I was as in the dark as a vampire bat in a cave at midnight. It wasn’t like things are now—where you can just Google any- and everything—so if you didn’t get information from your parents, there weren’t that many other legit places you were gonna get it. Sex education at school was clinical and brief, and crammed into one day where the girls and boys were split up.
Who knew what they taught the boys? For that matter, who knew what they taught the girls? I certainly didn’t—I had the flu that day and missed it all. Every last bit of it.
I knew there was such a thing as a period, and that some of my friends had theirs already, but I had no idea what a period was. I didn’t know what it looked like, what it felt like, or why it happened. So one day, when my stomach was hurting really bad and I found blood in my underwear, I immediately burst into tears. I thought I was dying and probably only had days to live.
My mom found me crouched on the stairwell and bawling. “Mommy, there’s blood in my panties. I’m gonna die!”
“Oh, child please” she said. “That just means you’re a woman now.”
What?
“Let me get you some Kotex.”
Ko-who?
Back in those days, pads were about the size of a diaper, and you wore them attached to a sort of belt that went around your waist and had these metal clampy things in the front and the back. Mommy showed me how to put it on, and then handed me a stack of pads. “Make sure you change it regularly,” she said, “or you’ll start to smell.”
And that was the end of that lesson. I was a woman now, with no idea what the hell was going on. Was I gonna die soon? I still felt like I was. I didn’t even know that having my period meant that now I could also have a baby.
I was left to fend for myself.
And I didn’t fend very well.
When I got pregnant, my prior sexual experience consisted of some poking, prodding, pushing, and pain, but never any pleasure. I had met this older navy man who was cocky and intense and intimidated the hell outta me. He knew what he was doing, but me . . . I wasn’t a virgin—I’d had sex once before and didn’t know what was happening except for a lot of “ouch!”—but I was still as clueless as a kitten. This went here, that went there, he moved around and yep, we made a baby. At that time, being pregnant without a husband was an extremely shameful thing, and my parents were—you guessed it—extremely upset. At their urging, I called the one telephone number I had for Mr. Navy.
His mother answered the phone, and I told her the news.
“Honey,” she said, “that’s your problem.” Then she hung up.
I was shocked, then numb, then crushed. Then feelings of worthlessness flooded in. Her abrupt dismissal of me and the baby growing inside me made me feel like I wasn’t a person but merely a thing—actually, two worthless things—she needed to protect her son from.
I never wanted anything like that to happen to Tyra. Ever. So when her Aunt Flo came calling, I wasn’t gonna just spill the beans. I was gonna add ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, molasses, onions, and bacon to those beans. (That analogy makes odd sense, but I thought I’d sneak in my recipe for doctoring up canned baked beans. They will make you wanna slap yo mama! But you better not.) What I’m trying to say is, I was gonna tell Tyra a helluva lot more than “You’re a woman now.”
Embarrassment and awkwardness—c’mon. Y’all two are invited to the lesson. Cuz Miss Tyra is going to know every damn bloody thing.
Tyra: All my friends were getting their periods. But me, I didn’t get mine until I was fifteen; even in my “mature�
� state, though, it was still friggin’ awful. I started to freak out as soon as I realized I was bleeding. Why? Because I was at my daddy’s house and desperately did not want him to know.
I called Ma and told her that she needed to come get me—now!—and told her that under no circumstances was she to tell my dad why.
“Please, Ma, please. Don’t tell Daddy!”
Carolyn: I told him. I didn’t want to look like the crazy ex-wife, showing up to drag our daughter off with no explanation.
Tyra: Oh my God! She told him behind my back. I was devastated. “You’re probably just spotting,” he said on the phone to me an hour later. I wanted to die. Die. For one, spotting? How the hell did he even know what that was? And two, he wasn’t supposed to know!
Damn you, Mama!
To this day, my dad still talks to me like I’m a little girl—“Buster, Daddy loves you,” and he does it so singsongy, like he’s some character on Sesame Street—so at the time, it mortified me to think I’d become a real woman under his roof when I knew he still felt and treated me like I still watched Big Bird. I’d even lied for four years and said I believed in Santa Claus after knowing it was my parents leaving Barbie camper vans and Holly Hobbie ovens under the Christmas tree. It wasn’t that I wanted the extra presents. It was because I saw how much my dad enjoyed it, and I didn’t want to take that joy away from him. (And the extra ColecoVision video game cartridges like Frogger, Donkey Kong Jr., and BurgerTime from “Santa” didn’t hurt.) So when I started my period, I think I freaked out because part of me wanted to stay a little girl—his little girl—forever.
Then, of course, Mama threw me this odd, strange, weird, wacky but kinda-beautiful-in-its-own-way celebration.
Carolyn: I had always loved anthropology (the study of humans, not the store) and learning about different cultures and traditions all over the world. One day, I was watching a National Geographic special and saw that in almost every primitive culture, there was a rite of passage ceremony where the women would come together to honor a girl who had started her period and teach her all about it. It was a celebration of womanhood, and an acknowledgment of passing into another realm.
That got me thinking—what did we do for our women, American women? There was no ceremony, and there certainly was no celebration. All we got was a box of Kotex! That was when it hit me: I’d throw Tyra a period party.
And let me tell you, there ain’t no period party like a Mama Carolyn period party. Right after I had the idea, I started planning, and when I told Tyra about it, she started giggling and couldn’t stop. We invited all the teenage girls she was close to. I told them they didn’t have to, but if they wanted, they could bring a gift. After all, this was a celebration, right?
Soon, I got a call from the mom of one of the girls. “What’s this my daughter’s talking about?” she asked. “She said she’s going to a period party at Tyra’s house?”
I explained the premise, and she laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe. She said I was nuts. “You’re invited, too,” I told her.
“No, no, that’s OK,” she said. “You’ve got some wacky parenting techniques, but I trust you cuz Tyra is a good and healthy-minded girl. So you know what? You go right ahead. Is it a potluck? I can send over a dish.”
Tyra: Why did I get my period so late? Because I was so thin. At least that’s what my doctor said. Something about me not having enough body fat that stimulates the production of estrogen or something. Anyway, I’d already had my first kiss, which is probably a little backward for most girls. Still, the period party was very special, and from the time I first heard my mama’s crazy idea, I couldn’t stop laughing. None of my friends could believe Ma was doing this. Once again, they thought I had the craziest, coolest mom in the world.
Because I did.
Carolyn: Tyra’s favorite color is yellow, so I decorated the house with yellow crepe paper garlands and balloons, and set out refreshments. I even had a cake made, with yellow frosting and flowers, and the exact words my mama had said to me when I got my period: “You’re a Woman Now.”
When I went to pick up the cake, the lady at the bakery asked what occasion the “Woman Now” cake was for. “It’s for my daughter’s period party,” I said.
“Huh? What does that mean?”
I broke down the whole idea, and her jaw dropped.
“A what for what?” she asked, shocked. “Why would anyone want to celebrate something so horrible?”
Now I knew I was on the right track. I didn’t want my daughter thinking that this thing that was happening to her, which was perfectly natural and happened to every woman, was horrible like this lady thought it was. So to rub it in the baker’s face I said, “Hmmmm. Maybe I should have ordered red velvet with ruby-colored cream cheese frosting!”
The whole point of the period party was to illustrate that becoming a woman is wonderful, not shameful. The female reproductive system has given all of us life, but so many people scrunch their faces up and treat it like a horror curse. This isn’t the prom scene in Carrie—there’s nothing to be afraid of. The only pig in sight at the party was the bacon in my famous baked beans.
Tyra: I do think Ma was overcompensating a wee bit with the whole period party, but who the heck can blame her? Her own mother, my dear Grandmama, was so backward with the whole menstruation thing, my mama vowed that my experience would be the complete opposite. But I can’t blame my granny for what she told my mama. I bet it was more than her mama told her. Also, seeing me freak out when I got mine at my dad’s house, my mama saw firsthand that I already had so much shame connected to becoming a woman and said to herself, “I have to do something before my child goes crazy!”
I appreciate that she never wanted me to be ashamed of anything, or to think that there was something bad or dirty about my body. And to prove that, the period party had all kinds of bells and whistles and, of course, tons of TMI.
Carolyn: Most of the girls at Tyra’s period party had started theirs, but I still gave them all the complete breakdown. I wanted them to understand everything, from what the blood means to why it happens once a month and where a tampon goes. I had charts of the female anatomy, and I pointed out every part by its actual name. We all had vulvas and labia, so why should we be too embarrassed to say the real words? Majoras, minoras, and clitorises, oh my!
The highlight of the party was when I brought out the menstruation gift basket, which was better than anything you could ever order from 1-800-Flowers. I had gone to the store and gotten one pack of practically everything: tampons with the applicator, tampons that you insert manually, panty liners, pads, feminine deodorant spray—even though I didn’t use it, it was in the aisle, so I threw it in. I arranged it all with some bright yellow tissue paper and included some day-of-the-week panties, which completed the ultimate period goody bag.
I took the girls through each and every thing in that basket and explained what the items were for and how to use them. I opened up the boxes of tampons and pads so that the girls could touch them and see what they looked like outside the packaging.
I talked about how often you need to change tampons (to keep toxic shock away) and pads (to keep all kinda mess away), and talked about how they’d have to try out different types and brands to decide which was the most comfortable for them. When I was at the store, I’d specifically looked for the biggest Kotex I could find. “If you’re worried about having accidents at night,” I said as I held it up, “this will be your best friend, because it goes all the way up to your navel in the front, and all the way up your butt crack in the back.” This was pre-“wings.”
The girls’ reactions to it all were pretty mixed. Confused. Excited. Downright disgusted.
“It’s like a diaper!” they screamed while passing around the massive pad. “I couldn’t even walk two feet in that!”
In between some of that disgust and embarrassment was a lot of excitement. Most of the
m had never talked about their periods so openly before, and in between the “yucks” and giggles, they asked questions about everything from whether using tampons takes away your virginity to wanting to know if other people can tell when you’re on your period.
The highlight of the party, though, was when I brought out the ancient period belt I’d had to wear when I was a teenager. To their young eyes, I’m sure it looked like a torture device. I guess back in the day, it kind of was. Thank God (or whoever invented them) for pads with adhesive!
Tyra: My friends did a love circle for me, where they all held hands and danced around me, and shouted out beautiful or funny stuff about me.
“You’re so goofy and fun, Tyra.”
“Bloody Tyra. Bloody Tyra,” to the tune of Bloody Mary.
“Last to flow and bleed but first to help in our times of need.”
My fave color, which was forced upon me by my paternal grandmom (long story) was on full blast on my cake, so it appeared it was made for Big Bird. We ate every drop of that sunshine bright cake, and I opened the gifts from my buddies, and Ma brought out a basket of “feminine products” that I was used to just passing by and ignoring in the supermarket aisle.
In addition to all the blood collectors, there were feminine douches and all this kind of stuff, and later my mom apologized big-time.
Carolyn: The vagina is a self-cleaning oven. You don’t need to flush anything up it unless your doctor says so. I learned that information after the party and regret telling Ty and her friends otherwise. Meanwhile, I caught her staring at the tampons like they were monsters.
Tyra: Tampons are mysterious demons. At least that’s what I thought touching one for the first time. How the heck was I supposed to get that rough thing up my you-know-what? Sorry, Ma. I know you want me to use the real V-word but “you-know-what” just seems a bit easier right now. Anyway, I vowed to never use them. Tampons, that is. Ever. But I’ll never forget my future BFF—maxi pads. Yep, they were in there. Those pads were superthick, like an In-N-Out Double-Double hamburger. Mama was all excited, going on and on about the innovative, futuristic technology of the sticky stuff on the underside of the pads that miraculously adheres to one’s underwear.
