by Tyra Banks
Going natural
Adding hair extensions for the first time
Overcoming fears (like posing with spiders)
Taking risks (like floating in a wind tunnel)
Dressing in drag
THE NO-GO ZONE
Hanging out solo, in a nonwork environment, with any men (or women) you do not trust
Stealing from the company you work for, helping a coworker cheat, or falsifying information
Anyone, anywhere, ever who offers you work in return for sexual favors
Drugs (including alcohol) and anyone who pressures you to do them
Crazy weight-loss tips or starvation diets
Signing contracts you have not read or do not have the opportunity to have a lawyer review. Anyone who throws a fit about you wanting to understand something before you sign it does not have your best interests in mind.
Carolyn: I’m always touched when I hear Tyra rally for all the atypical girls who break the mold, ’cause I was one of those girls, and I know Tyra was, too. She may be fierce and flawsome (and damn near six feet tall) today, but I know there’s still a skinny, insecure eleven-year-old girl hidden deep inside under all those wigs and false lashes. The cookie-cutter girls . . . hmmmm . . . they’re too worried about being perfect to have much flavor. It’s the girls like us—the imperfect ones—who spice it up (and have all the good dance moves, too).
Tyra: It’s easy to define cookie-cutter. You hear those words and an image probably pops into your head immediately. You know exactly what I’m talking about—that person with features that are really pretty but also really common. Lips just so, hair like, y’know . . . that. Nothing that really stands out. But wait a sec. Think about different. How can you even begin to define different? You’ve got to think about that one for a minute. Chew on it and flip it upside down and backward in your mind.
There’s so much to different! It could be mismatched-colored eyes, freckles, a crooked smile, one dimple, a birthmark, a shaved head. . . . Different is infinite. You never know what to expect, and that, to me, is so exciting.
My pet peeve is when we give a girl an amazing Tyover and she does really well on Top Model, then as soon as the show is over, she goes back to her normal hair and has no career (’cause her boyfriend didn’t like her pixie cut, or some nonsense like that). I’m like, “Girl, hello?”
I’m not saying you have to choose between having a man and being different. No, not at all. I’m just saying get you a man (or a woman) who appreciates different. Those are the good ones, anyway. I had one who loved and was attracted to me no matter—a weave, a slick-back, cornrows, my natural no-relaxer-textured hair, and even me with my scarf tied on my head in the morning. And he hated when I wore bangs.
Dang, maybe I shoulda kept him.
GO WITH OPTION C
Tyra: I have two selves. I have Tyra, and I have the Thing.
Tyra puts her son to bed each night with a sloppy kiss, loves frozen dinners, holds business meetings in clothes she’s worn two days in a row, calls her mama too much, and sits on the couch in sweatpants sending e-mails while licking the frozen dinner paper container because the sauce is just too good to waste (I mean, have you had that Indian food from Amy’s?).
The Thing hosts all those shows with America in the title, was in all those magazines, and yeah, the Thing is a supermodel.
Another supermodel, Cindy Crawford (my idol—aughhhhhhhh! I love that woman!), introduced me to the Thing—that was what she called herself after she’d gone through the works. You get the full face of makeup, you get the hair extensions, and then a few more hair extensions, the body makeup, the boob tape and push-up bra, the soft ambient lighting, the photographer who knows your good side, a retoucher who says, “Poof, it’s gone,” to any cellulite, stretch marks, zits, wrinkles, bruises (those damn pointy doorknobs in my house!), and a whole team of people (and their assistants) whose sole purpose for the next three hours is to make sure you don’t have visible panty lines, a double chin, or kale in your teeth.
Carolyn: But damn, sometimes I have to look twice before it sinks in that the Thing came out of me all those years ago.
Tyra: The Thing looks so damn good because it is the Thing’s job to look so damn good. There are a lot of people paid a lot of money surrounding the Thing to make sure that happens. As a model, the Thing is your product. It is the commodity that you sell, but it is not who you are.
Mama never let me forget that.
Carolyn: “When they say they don’t want you for a job, they’re not talking about you. The Tyra Banks they know . . . she is not you,” I’d say. “She is a product on the shelf. The Thing. But you, my dear—you are my TyTy. And you will forever be my special little girl. Never forget it.”
Sometimes, I would grab and shake Tyra. I would have hit her over the head (only with something soft, like a pillow or a bag of popcorn) if that was what it took to drill it in. I did not want her to let these powerful bosses in black get to her, because I knew that if she stayed focused, one day they would look at her in awe.
Tyra: Being a model gave me a behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-all-up-in-it relationship with beauty transformation, because I saw just how much pulling and tugging went into making the Thing come to life. Most women don’t get to see that. Don’t get it twisted—many beauty tutorials today have filters, editing, and feels-real-but-ain’t tricks. So many people see a produced, finished version of the Thing, and if they’re at all insecure (aren’t we all, to some extent?), they end up comparing themselves to it. Damn you, Thing! So I say to you—yeah, the You who is reading this right now . . .
Stop. Do not do that!
But still, I don’t blame ya if you do, because sometimes it doesn’t seem like you have that many options when it comes to how you look. In fact, it usually seems like you have two: option A and option B.
Option A is to be completely natural, standing there in nothing but a pair of granny panties without even a touch of mascara, no retouching, and bad posture. Some women who see that start sweatin’ in their Spanx and doubting, thinking maybe they’re just fake, superficial chicks after all.
Option B is the red carpet and the glossy spreads of fashion magazines, full of women who are 5'10", 110 pounds (tops); and social media, where some stars of the ’gram are edited until they’re just one blur away from turning into an anime character. The message of this option is “Screw anything and everything that’s not perfect, so you better start starvin’ and sculptin’ now cuz I look like this IRL, bitches!”
I’m here to advocate for option C: You do you.
I love me some makeup because I believe it is the great beauty equalizer. It’s leveling the playing field one cosmetics bag at a time.
Want cheekbones? Honey, paint ’em on!
Want fierce brows? A little pencil here, a little brow groomer there, and boom! You just framed your Smize like it’s hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art!
Need a little look-at-me boost before you walk into a room? Gimme an L, gimme an I, gimme a P, gimme an S, gimme a T, gimme an I . . .
Wait, that’s got too many letters in it! You got it—you know I’m spelling out lipstick. I can move on. OK. OK . . .
As much as I want to tell women to be confident in who they are, I also want them to know there’s no shame in a little contour here and a little tuck there. Stand there in those granny panties, but let me add an hour of makeup to you, a wig, and a wind machine, and a retouch blur or two because you deserve to feel just as glamorous as all those Photoshopped skinny chicks (and curvy ones, too).
Every woman deserves to feel beautiful, and I love, love, love being able to show a woman how little it takes to show off a new side of herself. When people come up to me on the street or at events and want to take a selfie, I don’t just snap the photo and get out of there—I’m tryna get them the best damn selfie t
hey’ve ever taken in their lives. “Here, add a little lip gloss, and we’re gonna put some on your cheekbones, too. Flip all of your hair over to the side like that and elongate your neck. Tilt your head this way and put your chin down just a bit. Now lemme just move this candle over here so your good side is lit. . . .” And snap.
I don’t need my Top Model wind machine and a whole team. I just need a camera phone and whatever prop I’ve got on hand. Then I show her the picture on her own phone, and her face transforms into shock, disbelief, and Oh-my-God-Tyra-I-can’t-believe-this-is-me joy. This mom/waitress/daughter/bus driver/DMV worker/dentist/accountant/marketing exec/kindergarten teacher who swears she doesn’t care about makeup and has never been photogenic is smiling so hard she starts to get a headache at how good she is looking. To me, that elation is the money spot. It makes me so happy. That’s what I think the Tyra personal brand (Lordy, I am up here talking in the third person. Forgive me!) is all about: You don’t have to chase something that’s impossible and live up to some BS, but you can dream and have fun and enhance what you have. Beauty is not a limited quantity that only gets doled out to a few. Beauty is not one of those tiny appetizers with three bites of hamachi—it’s family-style fried chicken. There’s plenty to go around, so everyone should dig in and take however much they want.
I can’t stress that enough, whether you work on a photo set, set the record straight in courtrooms, or work any other job between, you have to follow your gut (even if it’s sucked in) and do what makes you comfortable. Maybe that’s a lot, maybe it’s a little, maybe it’s none at all.
It is about you.
End of story.
So when you feel forced to choose between A and B, just C your way out of it.
Carolyn: You just need to read the title of this book to know how I feel about cookie-cutter. It’s predictable, obvious, boring. And yeah, cookie-cutter girls often get preferential treatment in life. It’s OK, though. Why? Because they also tend to peak early. So, if you’ve always been a cookie-cutter dame and are now eighteen years old, enjoy that beauty while it lasts. ’Cause once twenty-eight comes around the bend, you may need to throw a beauty going-away party. I’ll attend. Especially if you’ve got ice cream. Make mine chocolate chip.
The late bloomers, those awkward girls who cry themselves through adolescence, they are the ones who need encouragement and hugs. They have struggled, cried themselves to sleep night after night. And now, it’s their turn. There were no pretty-girl handouts for them, so when that pretty bus stops and invites them on, they are a bit confused and have to be convinced they can step aboard.
After years of crying herself to sleep over her reflection, when that bus stopped for Tyra, she hopped on. But before she took her front-row seat, she held that door open for millions of other girls to get on the bus. She’s still holding it. I bet her arms hurt.
But it’s worth it.
9
EMBRACE YOUR BOOTY
Tyra: Everyone thought I was on vacation, just letting it all hang out. But really, I was in Australia shooting for Top Model when those photos were taken. People think I got caught during some me time, but child, I was posing. For you.
Anyway, you might know the photos I’m talking about. Me. In a brown strapless one-piece swimsuit, on the beach, my hair’s flowing and my ass and thighs, well . . . some say those are ummm . . . overflowing. I call it curvy, thick, sexy, voluptuous. But the world called it something else.
Fat.
During that photo shoot, we knew that there were paparazzi in the distance. My security was trained to recognize the glare on a lens, no matter how far away, and when they saw that signature reflection of light way up in the trees, we knew exactly what it was.
Whatever, we shrugged it off. Paparazzi come with the territory of being in the public eye, especially on a beach. A beach complete with a crew of about fifteen people doing a photo shoot. That #squad ain’t blendin’ in. We were some busy people, too. We had eight more shoots and locations to go to in Sydney that day, so we couldn’t waste time chasing the “paps” off every time one popped up.
After my last shot on the beach, as I was walking back to the location van, a paparazzo had emerged from the bushes and was right in the sand. I said hello, joked and asked him if he got the shot, and I was on my way. I didn’t get annoyed until he showed up at lunch miles away from the beach. “Oh, come on,” I thought. “Can’t this dude go bother somebody else? There has got to be some famous Australian around here somewhere. Where the heck is Nicole Kidman when you need her?”
I dropped some hints to him that he should be done, and he picked up on none of them—not even the one where I straight-up—yet politely—asked him to leave us alone so we could eat our juicy Australian steaks in peace.
He snapped away through the appetizer, main course, and dessert. So, my team and I brainstormed ways that we could have a little fun with him. As soon as we’d paid the check, we put our plan into action. Everyone at our table pulled out their camera phones and we chased him down the sidewalk, snapping away. We wanted him to see how it felt.
We were lighthearted, smiling and laughing the whole time, and the “photo shoot” lasted all of fifteen feet. But someone wasn’t smiling at all. My pap was pissed.
“Come on, dude.” I said. “It’s all love. We were just having a little fun being you.” Then I got in the van, and we drove away and had forgotten all about it as we continued to shoot around the city. When I laid my head on my pillow that night at the hotel, I’d forgotten it all.
Two weeks later, I landed at LAX airport and was back in the U.S. of A. I enjoyed Australia but it felt good to be home. As soon as the plane touched down, my cell phone was blowing up. Countless texts and voice mails, asking me if I was OK. Was I OK? Of course I was OK. I’d just spent three weeks shooting Top Model and had crowned a cha-cha diva winner who was gonna win the hearts of America and the world.
But then more messages started to flood in. Messages that revealed what the “Are you OK” concerned ones were all about: me on the cover of every tabloid out there, with headlines like AMERICA’S NEXT TOP WADDLE and THIGH-RA BANKS and TYRA TOPS 200 LBS!!! I about died when I saw that—of laughter. I thought it was crazy, but I did not take it seriously. But I did recognize that the people who sent them to me seemed to be enjoying every minute of it.
You don’t need me to tell you this, because anyone who’s ever accidentally opened their photo to the selfie cam when they weren’t expecting it knows—pictures can tell all kinds of cray stories. Oh yes, I was bigger than usual at the time, but it was nothing that was outside my normal “bigger phase” range.
The photos had just come out and people were coming up to me like, “Oh my God, you look great! How did you lose all that weight in a week?” If they didn’t know that it was damn near impossible for someone to lose forty pounds in seven days, I didn’t consider it my job to enlighten them. I didn’t tell people that I hadn’t lost any weight at all, that it was all in the difference a paparazzi photo can make. I just tried to brush it off and change the subject. “Oh, well, I don’t know . . . but damn, girl, you look fantastic! What type of weave hair are you using these days?”
Cut to a day later. I was standing in line at the grocery store. (Yes, I shop for my own groceries often.) The woman in front of me was looking at the tabloid magazine covers, then turned around and looked me straight in the eyes. There was no “OMG, Tyra, I can’t believe you do your own grocery shopping!” look on her face. Instead she said, “If they’re calling you fat, what am I?” And she said it through tears.
That was when it hit me—this whole incident wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t just about me.
No pun intended, but it was bigger than me. Much bigger.
I called my Tyra Banks Show producers from the car on the way home. We worked on producing the response-to-the-tabloids show for about a week, and I had intense sessions with
my team of producers to bounce ideas off them and figure out exactly what I wanted to say. (Thanks, Lauren Berry-Blincoe and John Redmann!) At first, I was going to end my diatribe by saying, “To everyone who goes around calling me and other women fat, f*ck you!” and flip off the camera. When the show aired, we’d just bleep out my words and blur my hands.
Then we sat back and realized that we wanted this moment to be more poignant than cursing, and we didn’t want to bleep or blur any part of it out, so we rewrote it. I tried so many different versions, like “Forget you!” or “Kiss my butt,” and even called the Standards and Practices, the censor police of network television. “Can I say ‘ass’ on TV?” I asked.
We had a winner.
The day of shooting, I was dressed in my little talk show dress, looking prim and proper. But something felt off. I called out to my stylist, Yaniece, “Do you still have that swimsuit from Australia?”
“The swimsuit?” she asked.
“Yeah, the swimsuit.”
“Girl, yeah. It’s with all that Top Model stuff over there in that suitcase.”
“Get it out,” I said.
“Why?”
I started taking off my clothes.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking at me like I was crazier than I already was.
“Just help me put it on,” I said.
She helped me yank it up, and I was about ready to exit my dressing room when I thought, “Oh shoot, I may be brave, but I ain’t stupid.” I called over Valente, my longtime makeup artist, who was also on the Australian beach with me, to put some body makeup on my legs, and run some Victoria’s Secret–like shimmer down the front of my thighs (a trick that makes it look like there’s a muscle there when there ain’t).
Then I walked out the door, straight to the stage.
When I entered that set in that swimsuit and nothing else, my staff and many of my producers were as shocked as the studio audience.
