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As one of the biggest African American
supermodels of the past decade and a half, Tyra Banks has a more acute
awareness of the beauty industry than most. She came of age in the
1990s and emerged as one of the most recognized faces in fashion and
beauty. But the road she traveled was arduous and she witnessed
firsthand how hard things can be for a young and eager black model.
Because of her experience, the model-turned-media mogul works through
her reality show, “America’s Next Top Model,” to change the industry,
and more ambitiously, the country’s perception of beauty.
Her Success Was Born Out of Bigotry
“My mom told me I could be anything I wanted to be and I had no idea I
had the heart in me for the daily fight I had to fight. Every single
day of my modeling career I was told that I was not going to get the
job because I was black. Even when I was a supermodel and selling
covers more than a lot of the white girls. Many times per day, I would
hear, ‘You can’t do [something] because you’re black.’ I’ll let you in
on a secret, black models don’t book as many fashion shows in the
winter. They like us in swimsuits and stuff because they say our skin
looks good in the swimsuits–but they don’t like us in like big wool
jackets. I don’t get it. [Laughs] So that was a struggle as well.”
Reminding Black Girls They’re Beautiful
“When I work on ‘America’s Next Top Model’ and there are young black
girls standing in front of me and I’m telling them that they’re
beautiful–I’m telling them that I love their hair, their full lips,
their nose, their eyes, their cheekbones, their beautiful black skin.
That girl may think that I’m speaking to just her, but she may not
understand that she is a vessel that I’m using to speak to every little
girl sitting at home watching the show that looks like that girl. It is
my passion and one of the reasons I do what I do is to expand what our
country and our world deems beautiful. It is my mission to open and
expand what our industry considers beautiful. It gets very frustrating
for me to see [how] the entertainment industry [will only] put certain
types of black women on a pedestal.”
A Legacy of Strong Black Women
“I truly look up to the black models that came before me, like Beverly
Johnson, and Naomi Campbell, Iman, Sonia Cole, and Karen Alexander.
Black models that paved that way. And I love the fact that I’m able to
open the doors for black models of the present and the future, [like]
Chanel Iman, Jourdan Dunn, Jessica White, Alek Wek; these are girls
working now that are doing so much more than even I did back in the
day.” —todd williams
