We Were All Rooting For You: An Examination of Tyra Banks’s Legacy

For those of us who spent the early 2000s engaging with reality TV programming of dubious educational value, the year 2023 marks a special occasion: Tyra Banks, supermodel, actor, and host of the reality TV show “America’s Next Top Model,” turns 50 years old. Banks, who rose to fame in the era of the ’90s supermodel, notably broke barriers as the first African-American model to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated and model for Victoria’s Secret.

However, the tide of public opinion seems to be turning against this runway legend as TikTok users scrutinize her role on “America's Next Top Model,” a show which frequently body-shamed contestants and used blackface on more than one occasion. As Banks’s legacy comes under fire, the tension between outdated standards “supermodels” like Banks represent and today’s values of inclusivity and diversity is more apparent than ever.

The recent backlash against Tyra Banks is representative of larger shifts in attitudes toward the modeling industry as a whole. Victoria’s Secret, a brand famous for its hyper-sexualized, ultra-thin “Angels,” of which Banks was a founding member, has recently replaced its roster of top models with a collective of seven entrepreneurs and activists who are, as the "New York Times" reports, “famous for their achievements, not their proportions.” In an interview with The New York Times, Victoria’s Secret CEO Mark Waters said that the decision to rebrand came once the company realized that the Angels and the unrealistic beauty standard they represent are no longer “culturally relevant,” as changing societal values have spurred efforts to redefine the modeling industry in a manner that promotes diversity and empowerment.

As the fashion industry increasingly supports more realistic and inclusive representations of beauty, episodes from Tyra Banks’s early tenure as host of “America's Next Top Model” in the 2000s feel like a time capsule from fashion’s Dark Ages. TikTok users have been particularly harsh critics of the unrealistic beauty standards the show perpetuated. One user filmed themselves reacting with horror as Tyra Banks pressured an “America's Next Top Model”contestant to undergo dental surgery to close a gap in her teeth, saying that her natural smile was not “marketable.” TikTok user @2theroot claimed that the frequent instances of body shaming “ruined” their mental health as a viewer of the show. A series of videos titled “Why Tyra Banks Is Going to Hell” indicate that Banks has become the focalized target for all backlash against past and present instances of sizeism and racism within the fashion industry.

It’s important to note that Banks — a model herself and one of the few Black supermodels of her generation — was often on the receiving end of the modeling industry’s toxic beauty standards. In 2007, while Banks was acting as the host of “America's Next Top Model,” she was ruthlessly attacked in the media for an unposed paparazzi picture taken of her at the beach, with titles like “Tyra Porkchops” splattered across tabloids. In a 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Banks admitted that the rejection and discrimination she experienced as a Black, curvy woman in the fashion industry made her “empathize with people who didn’t fit the cookie-cutter,” and motivated her to include non-conventional models in “America's Next Top Model” to “tell millions of girls around the world who looked like them that they were beautiful.”

Rewatching “America’s Next Top Model,” it is clear why Banks believed she was broadening the definition of beauty through her work on the show. Before its cancellation in 2018, “America’s Next Top Model” featured openly gay and transgender contestants, chose its first plus-size winner in 2008, and famously cast current supermodel Winnie Harlow, who has vitiligo, in 2014 — all years before brands like Aerie or Savage x Fenty made runway inclusivity mainstream. In fact, Tyra Banks received a GLAAD award in 2009 for her “strong commitment to educating the public about the lives of gay and transgender people” on “America's Next Top Model.”

However, conversations about the identities and appearances of diverse contestants were often mishandled — in 2005, Banks spoke to openly gay contestant Kim Stolz about not making her gayness too conspicuous to potential employers — and even as racially diverse groups of models appeared on the show, contestants were painted in blackface in order to portray ethnicities different from their own.

It is difficult to reconcile Banks’s legacy as a barrier-breaking top model with deplorable instances of body shaming and insensitivity on the show she produced and hosted. However, perhaps Banks and her most famous creation should be viewed as reflections of the modeling industry as a whole, and not as unique outliers in the fashion ecosystem that serve as a scapegoat for all criticism. One video from the show that has received particular backlash — in which Banks and the other judges discuss plus-sized contestant Robin Manning — emphasizes the inherent body scrutiny present in the modeling industry. Notably, Banks does not ridicule Manning’s body, though other judges accuse her of being “huge.” Instead, Banks remarks that Robin would be a difficult candidate to market because “on the top, she’s not plus-sized and on the bottom, she is.” The video illustrates that even when not engaging in outright size discrimination, the modeling industry demands that the vast diversity of human bodies and identities be pigeonholed into limited categories to market to the public, and rejects people that do not conform to those standards.

An industry that categorizes, commodifies, and markets human bodies will always be “problematic.” It’s time to stop blaming Tyra Banks circa 2003 for the modeling industry’s insidious culture.

—Staff writer Evelyn J. Carr can be reached at evelyn.carr@thecrimson.com.