Chapter Six
Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls, and Cha Cha Divas
Race, Beauty, and the Tyranny of Tyra Banks
It’s my number one passion in my life to stretch the definition of beauty. I listen to many heartbreaking stories of women who thought they would be happier if they looked different. I want every girl to appreciate the skin she’s in.
—TYRA BANKS, apologizing for making girls don blackface on America’s Next Top Model.1
As executive producer, Tyra Banks claims America’s Next Top Model aims to expand beauty standards, as she herself did as the first Black solo cover model for GQ, Victoria’s Secret, and Sports Illustrated ’s swimsuit edition. Chapter 2 documented how she fails at this lofty goal regarding weight, size, and eating disorders. Does she do any better at exploding race-based beauty biases?
Sometimes, yes. She exhorts ANTM contestants to be confident and love themselves, flaws and all. Her methods may be devised to break most models’ spirits for our viewing pleasure, but there’s something to be said for casting diverse young women and at least telling them that they’re gorgeous. In a TV landscape that has typically depicted girls of color as ugly when not ignoring them entirely, sometimes a slightly positive mixed message is as good as it gets. Better yet, every once in a while a truly subversive, dare I say feminist, moment can be found among ANTM ’s emotional and cultural wreckage. Model Anchal Joseph, who emigrated to the United States from New Delhi when she was six years old, wore blue contacts to her cycle 7 audition. When the judges asked her why, she said she’d always wanted different colored eyes:
TYRA:Do you think there’s something culturally in America or even in your own country that is telling you that a lighter eye is prettier?dq
ANCHAL: In India they do believe that lighter skin and lighter eyes are prettier. I actually want to beat that. Be like, “Hey, I’m dark, I’m beautiful, and I’m Indian, so I don’t have to have light skin or have light-colored eyes to be beautiful.”
After Anchal’s baby browns were photographed au natural, the judges said she was so gorgeous she could be Miss World. Asked how she felt looking at her picture without the contacts, she replied:
ANCHAL: It makes me feel pretty.
TYRA: It does? Why’s that?
ANCHAL: Because in a way I think I was hiding behind them. I’m glad. [At this, she broke down in tears of self-acceptance—and we got to watch her psychological breakthrough.]
TYRA [to judge Nigel Barker]: Nigel, you being Indian, how do you respond to that?dr
NIGEL: You are beautiful the way you are. We are all unique in our own ways, and it’s that uniqueness that makes people beautiful.
I’ll never accuse Tyra Banks of having a tenth of Toni Morrison’s wisdom. Still, I was impressed by the editing of Anchal’s initial longing for societal affirmation, à la The Bluest Eye, followed by her eventual realization that her dark skin and brown eyes simply make her more authentically stunning.

China Dolls, Dragon Ladies, and Spicy Latinas

Such moments are exceptions on ANTM, which, as previously discussed, set many of the templates for racial typecasting on network reality TV.
Of the 170 contestants cast by cycle 13, only five besides Anchal have been East or South Asian. The first, April Wilkner, half-Japanese and half-white, said that before she decided to model, “I never really thought about my ethnicity.” ANTM made sure viewers could think of little else. They framed her as uncomfortable with her cultural identity, while confusing that identity by adorning her with symbols from a country unconnected to her heritage (Chinese lanterns placed on her head, a dragon painted on her chest).
Cut to the cycle 6 audition of Korean contestant Gina Choe, who said, “I think there’s just not enough Asian models out there. I feel that I can break down that barrier, and I think it’s my responsibility.” Nice! You’d almost think the casting directors finally sought out an Asian American woman who was proud of her racial background.
Sadly, no. A moment later, she told us, “I’m not into Asian guys.” From then until her elimination five weeks later, Gina was edited as if she was struggling with “an identity crisis,” and stereotyped as an “exotic” fading flower who couldn’t stand up for herself when attacked by her competitors. She was vilified on the show, on fan sites, and by culture critics as being a poor representative of her race for making statements such as “As a Korean person and as an American person, I’m just a little bit of both, and I don’t know which one I am more of.” What went unexplored was why Top Model thought it appropriate to make Gina feel she had to choose whether she was “more” tied to her ethnicity or her nationality—the subtext of which implies that a Korean American is not a “real” American, just as Anchal was asked about attitudes in her “own country.”
Top Model has mixed and matched from various long-held stereotypes about Asian women in American movies, described in The Asian Mystique as including the cold and calculating “Dragon Lady” (traits assigned to ambivalent April) and the submissive “Lotus Flower . . . China Doll” (docile Gina).2 Cycle 11 finally cast a truly proud Asian American woman . . . then promptly reduced her to the clichéd “Vixen/Sex Nymph.” When we were first introduced to Sheena Sakai, a half-Japanese, half-Korean go-go dancer with a large rack and an even bigger swagger, she announced, “I’m gonna show you, America. You ain’t ready for this yellow fever. One time for the Asians!” Sheena was recruited by a casting director who saw her working as a stuntwoman for the movie Tropic Thunder—but as is often the case on reality television, producers revealed only those details that reinforced the frame they’d chosen for her character. Since they wanted her as that season’s resident “hootchie,” her stunt work wasn’t discussed on the show or mentioned on her CW bio. Instead, she was criticized as too sexy in every episode. Early on a judge sneered, “You look like Victoria’s Secretions.” Later, during a challenge in Amsterdam’s red light district, where prostitutes pose in storefronts to entice customers, she was told she looked like she should be selling herself in that window, rather than modeling clothes.
Latina Top Model hopefuls have been consistently typecast as promiscuous sluts, “naturally” good dancers, or bursting with machisma and ready to throw down. Semifinalist Angelea didn’t make cycle 12’s final cut after she got into a fight and was written off as hot-tempered, “ghettofied,” and easily provoked to violence.
Cycle 8 winner Jaslene “Cha Cha Diva” Gonzalez, who spoke Spanish in her CoverGirl commercial, was called “spicy” and portrayed as a cross between a “drag queen” and Carmen Miranda. High school dropout Felicia “Fo” Porter, half-Mexican and half-Black, was used to reinforce the “Latinos are lazy” trope: The unemployed model said she auditioned for the show to save herself “the busy hassle of putting your pictures out to agencies and hoping to get a call back.”
Other Latina models throughout the series have been called “fiery” as a compliment and “hootchie” as an insult. Second-cycle winner Yoanna House, named one of Latina magazine’s “It Girls,” notably avoided such typecasting. Since she is fair-skinned enough to pass for white, the show chose to erase her ethnicity, playing into the standard Hollywood convention that positions Caucasians as the “default” American. Most viewers were unaware that she was half-Mexican. Instead, media outlets from NPR and Time Out Chicago to International Cosmetic News refer to Jaslene as “the first Latina” to win the series, an assumption echoed by ANTM ’s fans.3

Entitled Divas and Ghetto Bitches

African Americans are pigeonholed into similar categories on ANTM, which introduced the Angry Black Woman to reality TV before Omarosa was a glint in the eye of The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett. Season 1 brought us self-indulgent, catty Camille, the Black model everyone loved to hate. By season 3, Tyra took to pretending she’s not an executive producer who casts for type. She warned eventual winner “Eva the Diva” to act sweet, because “I don’t want to cast another Black bitch.” But of course she did cast and edit Eva as the bitch du jour—until week 8, when two white image consultants instructed her to doff the diva label by “showing your best possible manners.”ds
The Violent Ghetto Girl (or as one model was described, the “ghetto Black Barbie”) also looms large. During her third-season tryout, low-income single mom Tiffany Richardson, who got kicked out of high school for acting like “the Devil,” said she wanted to be on ANTM to “soften up” because “I don’t want to fight no mo.” Uh-oh. The semifinalists went out to a bar, where a local “skank” poured a drink over Tiffany’s head. She freaked out, yelled, “Bitch poured beer on my weave!” and hurled a glass at her. Bottles started flying, and they hightailed it out of there. A white model condemned violence; Tiffany retorted, “That’s great, Martin Luther King. But I’m with Malcolm.” Violence is “all I know,” she said, because “nobody ever taught me to handle my problems without fighting.”
Though she was “trying to change for the better,” she got sent home to “the hood” by the end of the episode, calling herself a failure. But because she always wants to feature “another Black bitch”—especially of the ratings-generating “ghetto” variety—Banks brought Tiffany back for the fourth season, after she’d been through anger management classes.dt She made it to the seventh episode, where she couldn’t read from a teleprompter, grumbled, “This is humiliating more and more each week,” and was eliminated. This time, instead of calling herself a failure, she smiled, hugged the other models, and told them she’d be okay. This didn’t sit well with Tyra, who prefers self-flagellation and depression from rejectees, especially when they’re poor and Black. So, she took it upon herself to remind the girl of her place: “This should be serious to you!” Tiffany replied that looks can be deceiving, but she was “sick of crying about stuff that I cannot change. I’m sick of being disappointed, I’m sick of all of it.” Now apparently clairvoyant, Tyra yelled that Tiffany wasn’t really sick of disappointment, because if she were, “you would stand up and take control of your destiny!”
Tyra continued to criticize her “defeatist attitude” until Tiffany got choked up, saying, “I don’t have a bad attitude. Maybe I am angry inside, I’ve been through stuff, so I’m angry, but—” But she couldn’t finish, because Tyra cut her off with a neck-rolling, finger-pointing, top-of-her-lungs tirade:
Be quiet, Tiffany! BE QUIET! STOP IT! I have never in my life yelled at a girl like this! When my mother yells like this it’s because she loves me. I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you! How dare you! Learn something from this! When you go to bed at night, you lay there and you take responsibility for yourself, because nobody’s going to take responsibility for you. You rollin’ your eyes and you act like it’s because you’ve heard it all before—you’ve heard it all before—you don’t know where the hell I come from, you have no idea what I’ve been through. But I’m not a victim. I grow from it and I learn. Take responsibility for yourself!du
And with that, Tiffany was turned into ANTM ’s symbol of the irresponsible ghetto chick who isn’t willing to work hard to care for herself or her child. Such pop culture imagery builds on decades of inaccurate, scapegoating news reports dating back to the 1980s, which blamed so-called “welfare queens” (a phrase that became code for poor women of color, often young mothers) for the poverty, educational inequity, and violence that plagued their communities. According to this media mantra, these weren’t systemic problems requiring institutional solutions, they simply stemmed from laziness, greed, and lack of discipline inherent among poor youth of color. (Black and Latina girls bore the added burden of being branded promiscuous and immoral, while young men of color were pathologized as “Super Predators”).dv Tyra’s hissy fit about Tiffany’s supposed “victim” mentality and “defeatist attitude” was a revival of that sorry script. That she issued this verbal beatdown in the name of “love”—and treated the twenty-two-year-old as “ungrateful” for the chance to be used and shamed on national television—is deeply manipulative. That Top Model affects viewers’ perceptions of young women of color is even worse. Parroting Tyra’s rhetoric, a Television Without Pity commenter wrote, “Tiff and others like her can’t be bothered to pick up a book? Read. Learn. Get good grades . . . Tyra was right. Get off your ass Tiff and accept responsibility for yourself. Her granmama put a roof over her head and food on the table and yet Tiff can’t be bothered to study and get good grades and pull herself out of poverty? Slackers disgust me” (emphasis mine).7

Uppity Black Girls Need Humble Pie

Faced with a strong Black woman who couldn’t be shoehorned as an ignorant, angry, ghetto bitch, Tyra had only one more card to play: “Bourgie Snob.” Meet Yaya DaCosta, cycle 3’s Ivy League runner-up. An African Studies and International Relations student at Brown University, she spoke Portuguese and French, auditioned with her hair in braids, and intended “to represent a beauty that is Black.” She was elegant, intelligent, and poised. Tyra was initially “impressed” with Yaya’s education and “her Afro-centric vibe,” which may be why she was one of the only girls in ANTM’s history to be allowed to wear her hair in a natural ’fro, saying it showed her pride as a strong Black woman.
Alas, the sisterlove was short lived. Yaya looked like a stunning “chocolate Barbarella” in photos, but Tyra said she didn’t seem “modelesque” in person. “Think . . . glamour, as opposed to natural,” she instructed. A white stylist was brought on to tell her that her “Earth Mother” look would turn off advertisers: “If you go into a toothpaste ad, are you gonna go in a dashiki?” she sneered. “They’ll see the big hair and they’ll see the African print and it’s like, oh my God!” Later, during judging, the stylist disparaged her “intensity to prove your sort of Africanness . . . it’s overbearing. It’s just too much. It’s sort of a layer on top of a layer.” To her credit, the camera caught Tyra glaring, clearly pissed off. In contrast, Yaya wasn’t allowed to be upset at this obviously racist swipe.dw When she protested being stereotyped and turned into “a cliché,” Tyra reprimanded her for “being very defensive, and it’s not attractive,” and made her apologize to a kente cloth hat. During evaluation, Tyra reiterated that “Yaya brings [a] superiority, condescending attitude” that is “so ugly.”
From then on, they had their frame. Through the magic of editing, Yaya’s education and elegance became pretentiousness; her eloquence was characterized as showing off. She took dazzling photographs and shined on the catwalk, yet for the rest of the competition Yaya was represented as an arrogant, Blacker-than-thou snob. She was chosen as fashion designers’ favorite at client meetings, yet the judges condemned her as so stuck-up and hypersensitive that “no one will want to work with you.” She made it to the finale, but lost because the judges didn’t consider her “likable” enough.
Viewers tend to believe that the caricatures they’ve seen on reality TV match (or at least resemble) participants’ real-life personalities, regardless of the truth or falseness of that person’s portrayal. Yaya is a case in point. The image foisted on her by ANTM ’s producers clung to her for five years and numerous film and TV jobs later. In 2009, when Entertainment Weekly reported that she landed a role on ABC’s Ugly Betty, readers said they “hate Yaya with a passion,” called her “arrogant,” “pretentious,” and “nasty,” and wrote that “she needs a big piece of humble pie!” When a smart, self-possessed African American woman is said to “need humble pie,” the message is that this “uppity” Black person just doesn’t know her place.8

Curious George, Work It Out!

Some of the above tropes, like Tyra’s tirade against Tiffany, require some unpacking to realize how they connect to a long history of attacks on women of color in politics and the media. But deep-seated beauty biases were all too clear in the representation of Kelle, an affluent African American gallery owner who called herself “a white girl with a really good tan.” She came into the competition exuding confidence to the point of conceit, but a few weeks in Tyra’s den of self-doubt changed all that.
Over numerous episodes, viewers were treated to multiple scenes in which Kelle sadly inspected herself in a mirror, pondering newly perceived flaws and telling the camera that she’d grown to believe the judges’ appraisal of her. “I just see myself and I’m like, Oh my God, I’m hideous!” she sobbed. “I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. . . . Every time I look in the mirror I’m crying.” As one of her competitors explained, “Kelle came in this competition and she was like, ‘Oh, oh, I’m beautiful!’ and the judges have totally broke her!” After being told repeatedly that her face, and particularly her mouth, were not photogenic, she broke down in a fit of internalized racism. While Tyra made each girl reveal her deepest body insecurity, Kelle complained that she hated her profile. “It’s like I have a protruding mouth. You know what I mean? I almost feel like I have a monkey mouth. I guess [it] can look like really, I don’t know, primitive.”
It’s telling that the show chose to air that comment rather than leaving it on the cutting room floor with hundreds of not-ready-for-prime-time hours of tape. Yet such a statement could have been used as a teaching moment, to raise awareness of the historic dehumanization of Black women starting with imagery during slavery and progressing to contemporary ads that depict Black women as exotic, primal animals. So, did Tyra “I’m a proud, beautiful Black woman” Banks break it down for Kelle, and for the millions of young viewers who idolize the former Victoria’s Secret supermodel? Did she tell Kelle to do some emotional work to reject the external messages she’s gotten from a culture that tells Black women that they are low, ugly creatures? Or did she even spout one of her clichéd “Girl, your mouth is fierce!” Tyra-isms?
Fat chance. Rebuking racist imagery doesn’t fly in advertiser-driven reality TV, and Banks’s role as producer took precedence over any sense of social responsibility or ethnic solidarity. “We’re gonna have to do some profile shots and analyze that. . . . I’d be like, ‘Go, Curious George, work it out!’” Top Model’s diva-in-chief replied. “I’m glad you guys are so honest, you know what I mean? That’s what it’s about, that everybody understands that you’re not perfect. And that this is a business of smoke and mirrors, and fooling people into thinking you look like something else.”
Let’s unpack, shall we? A Black teenager thinks she’s hot until ANTM’s judges convince her she’s an ugly ape. To make her feel better, Tyra calls her Curious George,dx but assures her that with the “smoke and mirrors” of makeup, lighting, and camera angles she can “fool people” into thinking she’s not so primitive after all. Kelle revealed what ANTM taught her in an episode titled, “The Girl Who Cries When She Looks in the Mirror”:
I’ve realized what it was. It’s this part of my mouth. It’s like an extra layer of fat or something. So it’s like a snout. . . . I was in denial about my snout. And now I know, and so it’s just hard to work . . . [it makes me] very limited.

Black Models Gone “Wild”

Here’s a phrase I wish I didn’t have to say: At least Tyra didn’t order Kelle to wear a monkey suit.
Remember the “sexy little animals” ad ANTM shot for Lubriderm as soon as they arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, mentioned in chapter 2? That shoot—like Kelle’s “Curious George” instruction—fits into a lengthy and shameful history of racist imagery in advertising, media, and American politics.
The depiction of African Americans as animals and/or savages dates back to preabolition newspapers and magazines, where political cartoons and crude artwork accompanied editorial copy justifying the ownership of, and denial of basic human rights for, “the Negro race.” At the same time, print ads sold all manner of products using such imagery to mock and dehumanize Black men, women, and children. Historically such media images functioned as visual propaganda, working to convince whites that Black people were not quite human—laying the groundwork for rationalizing slavery before abolition, segregation during Jim Crow, and contemporary proeugenics arguments.10
Such imagery is no longer considered appropriate in most mainstream news outlets.dy But just as modern beauty advertisers discovered more sophisticated ways to package the same messages found in those early-twentieth-century Camay Soap and skin-whitening ads discussed in chapter 2, the advertising industry continues to employ these themes, especially with female subjects.
Women’s bodies have borne the brunt of this vile ideology in contemporary advertising, which continues to portray Black women as provocatively clothed, snarling-mouthed animals, in jungles, deserts, and safaris. “Tame and timid? That goes against my instincts,” says a Black woman smoking a Virginia Slims cigarette in skintight leopard-print pants and matching halter top. “The hunting’s always good at Daffy’s,” reads the caption of an ad featuring a Black model crouched on a beach next to a lion, her leg tucked under her in the same position as the cat’s. “Gather your ammunition (cash, check, Mastercard or Visa) and aim straight for Daffy’s. It’s the best hunting with the best bargains around.” Are we hunting the feline, or the human? The ad draws no distinction—they’re both wildcats.11 In a September 2009 Harper’s Bazaar spread headlined “Wild Things,” supermodel Naomi Campbell skips rope with monkeys, rides an elephant and an alligator, and races a cheetah while her own spotted dress trails like a tail in the wind.dz
Like ANTM’s “sexy little animals” photo shoot, Daffy’s ad and Harper’s spread tread old ground. In 1985, supermodel Iman was photographed next to a cheetah, her head tilted in the same position as the animal, her body turned in a catlike contortion, and her hair wrapped in cheetah-print scarf. That same year, Iman stalked down a Thierry Mugler runway in safari garb with a live monkey hanging on her shoulder(!), while two buff Black men in loincloths trailed behind her carrying a giant umbrella.
Such images in advertising and fashion code women of color as “primitive,” with untamed sexuality both fearful and seductive. Taken to its (il)logical conclusion, this fetishized depiction culminates in images of Black women as dangerous creatures who must be literally deprived of their freedom. Naomi Campbell’s “Wild Things” pictorial was shot by world-famous fashion photographer Jean-Paul Goude. Nearly thirty years ago, Goude produced an infamous image of singer Grace Jones on all fours, naked, oiled up, and snarling inside a cage, surrounded by raw meat. Above her head, a zoolike plaque cautioned: DO NOT FEED THE ANIMAL. (A similar caged photo of Jones graced the cover of Goude’s 1981 book, Jungle Fever.) Locking her up is the only way to prevent her dangerous sexuality from overwhelming everyone in her wake, the picture suggests. This and several other now-iconic images of Jones posing behind bars, in chains, and with whips were replicated by biracial (Cape Verdian and Italian) model Amber Rose in the September 2009 issue of Complex magazine. As journalist Claire Sulmers notes, “Though the photos were taken decades apart, the message is the same. These women are so wild they must be caged—they’re sultry, snarling sex beasts.”14
By dressing a group of models up as “sexy” “native” creatures for a beauty ad as soon as they arrived in South Africa, ANTM wasn’t engaging in a harmless homage to the land they were visiting. The Lubriderm photo shoot illustrates how the advertising industry’s long-held racial essentialism influences the depiction of people of color in product-placement-driven reality TV.
I’m sure some may question whether the episode was actually racist, since white models were also featured as wildlife in the Lubriderm challenge. Yes, it was. The shoot built on a preestablished ad-industry precedent in which the mere concept of Africa and Black Africans are conjured to “represent white humans’ own more primitive past,” writes scholar Lisa Wade, on Sociological Images. Wade was describing a 2008-09 ad campaign by “Wild Africa Cream” liqueur, packaged in a leopard-print bottle with ubuntu beads around the neck. In the ads, a seductively clothed Black woman has grown a leopard’s arm; another sports a cheetah’s tail. White women and men in other ads in the series also have nonhuman features. The tagline? “Unleash your wild side.” Each ad featured a smoldering male or female model, Black or white, each with a leopard’s ear, hand, or arm. In an accompanying radio spot, a man speaks of following a sexy woman, wondering, “Did a leopard escape from the zoo?” while a female voice purrs that the liqueur can help everyone find “a little wild in them.”15
Since fashion and beauty advertisers have worked with ANTM ’s producers to build the show’s content around their products (and ideas), it’s no surprise that ANTM ’s South African animals shoot shares the “Africa connects us to our animal natures” reasoning of Wild Africa Cream’s marketing gambit. It’s also why the show would see no problem devoting several episodes to the process of convincing a beautiful (and formerly confident) Black teenager that her “monkey” “snout” makes her ugly.
Dehumanizing African American women in advertising and media carries very real consequences for the self-esteem of Black girls and women, as well as for larger society. When an entire class of people are seen as animals, it becomes harder to prevent violence against them and easier to justify denying them equal social, economic, and political rights. If only Tyra Banks were equipped to realize the impact her programming choices can have.

Tyra Banks: Fashion Victim Turned Fashion Perpetrator

Tyra is a favorite punch line of The Soup’s Joel McHale and The Dish’s Danielle Fishel, who mock her increasingly cringe-worthy acting and odd insistence on inserting photos of herself into every episode. Culture analysts have wondered why a powerful Black model who seems to really want the best for young women of color would subject them to such demeaning double standards. “On camera, many of the black ANTM contestants talk about how thrilled they are to be in Tyra’s presence; how her success as a black supermodel inspired them, helping them see themselves as beautiful for the first time,” Slate’s J. E. Dahl writes, “but how does she repay their adoration? By trying to eradicate ethnic idiosyncrasies in their personality and appearance.”16
Comics call her crazy, critics dismiss her as an opportunist, and her young fans fiercely defend her as the benevolent granter of young women’s dreams. I have a different theory: I believe she has grown up mentally colonized by fashion and beauty advertisers, leaving her with something akin to Stockholm syndrome.ea
Tyra Banks is many things. She’s someone who believes she’s an advocate for girls, especially girls of color. Four years before ANTM debuted she founded T-Zone, a summer camp program focused on self-esteem and leadership skills. Yet, she’s also the ultimate capitalist beauty industry success story. She grew up without money, but used her nearly naked body, and an incredible parade of wigs, to become a media mogul. In addition to serving as host and executive producer of ANTM, she filled both those roles on her daytime chatfest, The Tyra Show, for five seasons. This helped her earn an estimated $30 million in 2009 alone, more money than any other woman on prime-time TV. Her increasing fiscal power has drawn comparisons to Oprah Winfrey, despite the intellectual chasm between them.17
Most of the rest of us learn to navigate the everyday struggles of adolescence—body image insecurities, emerging sexuality, interpersonal relationships, and personal identity—from our friends, family, and community, at the same time as we are influenced by the media images surrounding us. But those images, and their makers, were Tyra’s dominant community. From age fifteen on, Banks was raised by the fashion and beauty industry and its advertisers. In loco parentis, they gave her fame and fortune beyond her wildest dreams—but always while pitting her against other women, requiring her to hide her natural hair, and reminding her that her value depended on being young and thin.eb
And so the cycle continues. As a curvy Black model who achieved many firsts, Banks fought against unfair race and gender barriers throughout her career. But like so many dysfunctional patterns, Tyra grew up to become the ultimate perpetrator of the ideology of the fashion and beauty advertisers who stunted her intellectual development and shaped her self-image, psychology, and values. In that context, why is anyone surprised that she is simultaneously
• hilariously narcissistic, as well as compassionate;
• wracked with internalized racism and sexism, while renouncing the concept of discrimination; and
• concerned with girls’ self-esteem, while profiting from a show that reinforces unhealthy body standards and racial stereotypes?
When she quit The Tyra Banks Show in 2010, she announced that her intention was to focus her Bankable Productions company on films that “can promote positive images of women.”ec I don’t doubt Tyra’s sincerity. But as ANTM illustrates, victims of advertiser-based Stockholm syndrome have an extremely skewed definition of what “positive” media imagery is and what it isn’t.
The truth is, the best thing Tyra could do to help “more women and young girls” to “feel as fierce as we truly are” would be to take ANTM off the air—or drastically remodel its format.18