by Tyra Banks
Awhile later, I heard about another respected doctor. But this one seemed to have a bit more respect for the truth. He said that my upper nose bones did seem quite askew, and confirmed that the itching was because of the offish direction of growth, but that there was absolutely no medical need to fix it. My breathing was fine. He told me he could stop the itching and sculpt my nose with his philosophy—to preserve ethnic features.
Did he keep his physical promise and did the itching stop? You nose it.
But I was pretty “meh” about Mama’s attempt at fixing something.
Carolyn: Are you talking about when I got them fillers on my laugh lines?
Tyra: You know it.
Carolyn: After all those needles, I looked the damn same!
Tyra: She did! You couldn’t tell one bit! And when I asked her why she did it, she said, “Well, all these women my age are doing it, so why not?” But she already looked young! So I got to be the mama that day. “If all your friends were jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump, too?” I asked. “’Cause that was a waste of your dang dollars!”
But usually I’m all for women doing whatever they want to do, because let’s face it, natural beauty is unfair.
I’ll say it again. Natural beauty is friggin’ unfair.
Yeah, I said it again. It’s pure luck.
Think about it: If someone becomes a multimillionaire by running into a twenty-four-hour mart drunk to buy some more malt liquor and a winning scratch card, are you going to praise him for his financial acumen and hard work? Hell no! You will shake your head and think, “Dang, he’s got some good-ass luck!” Or would you praise someone who was born a prince in a gilded castle complete with servants whose jobs are to wash his royal behind for working his way up the ranks (unless he was bootstrapping his way up from that first job in the castle mail room or fetching the queen her cappuccino)? Again, can I get a hell, no?
So why praise a naturally beautiful woman and say she’s good at life? Let’s face it—it’s not like she worked for that natural beauty. Her parents just rolled the dice with some sperm and an egg and came up with doubles. Luck, boo. Pure luck. I was born with some good genes (thanks, Daddy, for these long legs), but I am not a “natural” beauty.
Now, I’m going to pause a minute while you Google “Tyra Banks no makeup.”
Did ya do it?
Oh yeah, I see you’re laughing. You did it.
Me + no makeup = You can see why this went viral!
I’m just two big eyes and a forehead, right? (Or maybe two eyes and four foreheads.) That’s the real me, but I got a few (like in the hundreds) tricks up my sleeve. If I was a superhero (Tyzonia, me and Diana/Gal would be homies), my power would be posing and finding the right light. So, if a giant meteor was heading right for New York City, y’all could call me (just flash your makeup mirror a couple of times) and I would be there in a jiffy. Not to save your butts, of course, just to show you how to make sure the glow from all the explosions hits your good side and that you don’t have a double chin when that bridge goes down. Once I get myself all done up, I look bangin’ and I know it. But Tyzonia did not #wokeuplikethis. Nope. #ittakesavillage.
Me + lotsa makeup = You wanna ask me for Tyover tips, dontcha?
Carolyn: That was one of the first things I tried to teach Tyra back when she was struttin’ the living room in my nightgown and heels, prepping for Paris: It wasn’t just about how she looked standin’ there straight outta bed, but how she could transform.
One of the things that makes Tyra so unique is her facial expressions. She can look chic and glamorous, but she can also look like she belongs on SNL. She must have about thirty-seven more muscles in her face than the rest of us. When she really wants to turn it up a notch, she can contort them until she looks buck-wild crazy (I swear she isn’t, though).
She’s a chameleon. Whatever you want her to be, she can be. So when I see her transform, it’s kind of spectacular. I look at her like, “Wow, I created a princess? A doll? A tiger? A gazelle? A mermaid?” And then she makes a crazy face and I think, “A fool. I created a fool.”
Chameleon Tyra still blows my mind!
Tyra: Any model who thinks she’s got a one-way ticket to the top just because of her natural beauty has another thing coming. Natural beauty may get you about two steps up the stairway to success, but then you gotta work.
But who could blame a woman for thinking natural beauty is something to bank on? So many people reward natural beauty with power, so oftentimes, cookie-cutter beauties get all sorts of perks, from more money in their jobs to rich men who want to take care of them. Studies have shown that women who are perceived as more attractive make 5 percent more at work and even get higher grades in school. So, are we going to say that beautiful women are more intelligent and better employees, or that the world has a discriminatory bias? My money’s on the bias, baby, even though it’s hardly ever acknowledged. But I think that’s changing as we speak. In a 2017 Allure essay called “Being Pretty Is a Privilege, but We Refuse to Acknowledge It,” Janet Mock wrote about how we live in a culture that says a woman’s looks are her worth. And that “pretty” people do get special treatment, and that we need to take some ownership of that. That there is favoritism everywhere based on how people look. Janet went on to say that beauty isn’t something she worked super hard for, but that her looks have helped her journey big-time.
I smacked the table and yelled hallelujah when I read that!
She damn near blew my mind, because she was articulating so many thoughts I’d had over the years and blowing open a whole new conversation. These are exactly the kinds of things we need to talk about when we talk about beauty, especially as we (and when I say “we,” I mean society—from tabloids to television shows, social media, and online commenters) love to look down on women who try to make themselves more beautiful so that they can get a little bit of that same privilege and power.
“Oh my God, did you see her? What the hell does she think she’s doing? She got so much surgery, that’s awful.” Yeah, her surgery may look a bit, ummm . . . overdone. But, come on—we gotta be real and admit our society did that to her. It does it to all of us in some way. (I write this as I am getting a floor-length weave sewn in.) Shoot, man . . . I know as a model I represented a look that was pretty intimidating, and I would go overboard to dispel the myths of perfection.
As more and more women (and men) embrace the beautification tools that are available to them, and those tools become easier and easier to use (it’s not too inconceivable to think that soon we’ll be rolling through the drive-through to get some cheek implants with our iced blueberry decaf green tea mocha quinoa unicorn Pegasus framboozles), I think that we’ll see big shifts in the perception of beauty.
Carolyn: If you want proof of how much the perception of beauty changes in just a few decades, look no further than my high school pictures! Tyra loves to tease me and say that I looked fifteen going on thirty-five, but everybody did in the ’60s! Helmet hair was all the rage back then, and hell, if we could stand outside in the wind and it didn’t ruffle a single strand, then we thought our bangs looked bangin’!
Tyra: Mama’s right—beauty has already shifted to a much more undone state than it was in her day. No one was rocking beach waves and BB cream at her high school graduation—it was all about the bouffants and lashes so solid they cast a shadow.
I think that in the future, the most prized looks will be the flawsome ones (flaws + awesome ones), not the perfect ones. Then you might have people lining up to get their ears tweaked to stick out because that connotes youth, or wearing contacts to turn their blue eyes to dark brown; people will be using darkening creams to bring out their freckles and cocoa-deep skin, and dentists will make millions specializing in creating strategic imperfections. Who knows? I mean, shoot—in the Renaissance times, people used to go out of their way to turn their low fo
reheads into fiveheads! People were putting themselves through pain to achieve my lobe by plucking or pulling out their hair!
I wish I could create my very own time capsule of the non-cookie-cutter beauty trends that I see coming and stuff them in that box today and then five hundred years from now, someone opens it and announces to the world that I was right.
The one thing I do know is that the world’s perception of beauty is constantly changing. Trying to keep up and adapt to what everyone else thinks is beautiful is so damn tiring. I’m tired just writing about it. One year we are supposed to have a small butt. Years later, it should be gargantuan and lookin’ like that peach emoji (). Big boobs are all the rage. Oops, now a flat chest and no bra is what women crave. Thick brows are what everyone wants! Wait, what’s that? Oh, you plucked them bare a couple of years ago, when everyone wanted brows that looked like they were drawn on with a pencil, and now they won’t grow back? Well, too bad for you. Or how about that time you dropped some lye bills at the salon, only to have someone later that day tell you relaxed hair is so last year, all the cool girls are going natural now, and honey, a ’70s Afro would look so cute on you! So you just sit there and smile, thinking about your empty wallet and how it all makes you so frustrated you could eat your hot comb.
Backstage, no makeup, right in the middle of the skinny eyebrow trend! #90s
Carolyn: Curvylicious is definitely more of a trend today than it was when high fashion told Tyra to take a hike (and that was when we hiked ourselves over to the pizza place), and I love seeing modeling embrace bigger girls like Precious Lee and Saffi Karina (not to mention Tyra’s girl Ashley Graham).
But I’ll also always respect the thin girls, because that was Tyra at one time, too. I always wanted her to feel good about herself no matter what size her body was demanding it be at that moment. Mama Carolyn loves her baby girl, and every woman round this world, through thick, thin, and in between.
Tyra: Don’t get hung up on natural versus unnatural beauty, ’cause the end result is all the same—your reflection should make you Smize because you look just how you want to look. When it comes to beauty, it ain’t where ya from; it’s where ya at.
What matters most is that you feel like you are good enough. Maybe you hate makeup and think you look best with just a little tinted moisturizer! You go. Maybe you don’t want to leave your house without a full-face contour and some serious eyebrow microblading. You go, too!
As women, we have to be careful, because there are all sorts of unseen enemies out there lurking (and sometimes, this enemy is sitting at your dining room table, eating food that you cooked), trying to make you think that you are not enough and that feeling beautiful is reserved for those other women, women who are not anything like you. There are other types of enemies who will go on and on about how you look better without makeup, when what they really mean is they don’t want you looking and feeling your best because they are scared to lose you (’cause your bright red lips and chiseled-contoured cheeks were what caught their eye in the first place). You gotta watch out for this type and learn to recognize the signs (“What’s that crap all over your face?”) so that when you come across any of these frenemies, you can just poke ’em in the eye with your mascara wand. (I mean that figuratively, not literally!) They are not worth your time or lip liner.
It is unrealistic to expect to feel 100 percent good about yourself 100 percent of the time. There will always be little things that you don’t like or wish you could change, and those things will probably change from day to day. But don’t spend too much time worrying about it. Fix it or flaunt it, then get on with it!
You and your flawsome self got sh*t to do!
* * *
• • •
I’M AT A PARTY, eating damn near all the snacks (yes to those tiny crab cakes!) and sipping on a cucumber mint lemonade when I spot a modeling agent I’ve known for years. I’m practically pulling my arm out of the socket waving at him, but when he finally does come over to say hi, he seems less than pleased to see me. In fact, he seems almost pissed.
“Tyra girl, I am so over you,” he says.
“Oh my God, did they run out of crab cakes?”
He shakes his head and sips his vodka soda. “These open calls are running me ragged. We’ve got girls lining up at the agency at six a.m.—one of ’em even brought a lawn chair! All day, they just keep coming! We can’t take a lunch, we can’t schedule any meetings, we can’t get any work done.”
“Wow, that’s bananas!” I say while snatching a spring roll. “But why you mad at me?”
I gotta admit, he does look weary, and if we were on a plane, those bags under his eyes would not fit under the seat.
“Because your ass is on Top Model every week, telling all these girls all over the world that they’re all special and that they can be models and they believe you!” He signals the waiter for another vodka. “We used to have about seven girls a week show up for our open calls. Now we get hundreds. Last Thursday, it was so busy, all I ate all day was half a Luna bar I found in the trash.” He shakes his head like today’s the saddest day of his life. “And it was a lemon one, and I don’t even like the lemon ones.”
MY FAVORITE FLAWSOME BEAUTY TRAITS ON BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE LIKE YOU
Freckles (obsessed)
Frizzy hair
Unibrows
Bald heads
A chipped front tooth
Different-color eyes
Eyes that are too far apart
Very square heads
Super-round faces
Tiny boobies
Fiveheads (I know, I am biased)
Skin that is two (or more) different colors
Being super tall
Being super short
A crooked smile
A mole in the “wrong” place
As I continue to stuff my face, he continues his diatribe. “So we are gonna stop walk-ins and just have them mail in pics or send them in online.”
“So, let me get this straight,” I say. “America’s Next Top Model killed the open call because now there are thousands of girls out there who recognize their own beauty and feel that they could walk the runway or be on the cover of a magazine, too?”
“Yep,” he says, jabbing a cocktail straw at me like it’s a dagger. “And it’s all your fault, bitch!”
Now, I’m tryna keep a smile off my face. Because it may be a problem for him that more women now consider themselves beautiful because of Top Model, but it’s a major win for Tyzonia, the modeling profession, and the entire freakin’ planet! Low self-esteem and lack of self-worth are plagues, and we have to eradicate them. Expanding what is considered beautiful in our culture is a huge leap in the right direction, and more of those atypical girls lining up for modeling agency open calls will get signed because of it (a.k.a. making an agent’s job easier because he’ll have more models to work with than ever before!). I want to keep pushing and keep blowing the beauty door open so that eventually, every woman feels like the idea of beauty applies to her in some way, shape, or form.
One of my favorite things about Top Model was taking the contestants’ ideas of beauty and then putting ’em in the Vitamix until they were completely unrecognizable but just as tasty (if not even sweeter). Over the course of a cycle, I tried to get the girls to look beyond the traditional definitions of desirable that they’d been indoctrinated with since they were just tykes in their strollers, reaching for the blond-haired, blue-eyed baby doll. It is the most rewarding experience for me when a girl starts to embrace and flaunt the very things she once hated about herself.
One season of Top Model, we had a stunning model who had skin the color of my mom’s, which for African Americans is considered medium hued, but she said that where she’s from, it’s considered very dark. Dang, that girl was so unique and interesting-looking
with that strong, square head shape I adore. She always wore light-colored contacts, and to the panel of judges, they stood out on her face not always in the best way. When I finally asked her about them, she said that she was taught that the darker you are, the more you need to attain stereotypical beauty in other ways.
I worked overtime to boost her confidence from week to week to show her just how special her reflection was. Finally, she appeared in the judging room one day without the contacts, and she had the most gorgeous cocoa-colored eyes. She told me that although she had not expected it, she had never felt more beautiful, or better about herself, than she did on Top Model.
When she said that, I had a hard time holding back my tears (and I had to learn to hold back my tears on Top Model, or I woulda just bawled my eyes out through each and every episode, and no one wants to watch twenty-four cycles of Tyra cryin’). Her words really touched me, and I felt for all my deeply hued sisters who have ever felt or heard anything negative about their skin color. I hope that they got a little bit of healing along with my model in that moment, and had a little (or a helluva lot) more appreciation for their skin color, no matter what stunning shade it was, the next time they stood in front of a mirror.
To this day, my Top Model casting team and I are obsessed with showcasing a myriad of skin tones on our show, from alabaster to butterscotch to ebony and everything in between. When my boy Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, accepted his Tony Award just hours after the deadly mass shooting at the gay club Pulse in Orlando, he recited a poem he had written about it. The line “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love . . .” hasn’t left my brain since I heard it in that moment. It’s a powerful reminder to accept love in its whole, true, pure form, and I like to mirror him by saying, “Beauty is beauty is beauty is beauty. . . .”
