Tyra Banks didn’t always “get it right” on “America’s Next Top Model,” she told attendees at the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards, adding: “I said some dumb s–t.”
Banks was the event’s first Luminary Spotlight honoree on Feb. 27.
“Over 20 years ago I created a show called ‘America’s Next Top Model’,” she began her speech. “And you guys have no idea how hard we fought to bring the diversity to that television show at a time when it didn’t exist; to show different beauties at a time when the world was like, ‘What? You casting that?’ A time when people in the fashion industry were telling me, ‘You putting the girls from the hood on your show?”
“I was like, ‘Why can the girl from the trailer park become a supermodel but the girl that’s chilin’ in the park in the hood can’t?’” she added. “And we fought and we struggled and we made it happen.”
“Did we get it right? Hell no. I said some dumb s–t,” Tyra continued. “But I refuse to have my legacy be about some stuff linked together on the Internet when there were 24 cycles of changing the world. And I am so excited that I, and so many of us, have opened that door for others to follow.”
“And now my 51-year-old, dimpled, cellulite-covered bigger tummy and 10 million times bigger titties is walking through that door that I opened with all of us behind us on that runway saying, ‘Baby, it’s just the beginning,’” she concluded.
Banks came under fire in 2020 after renewed interest in the series (propped up in part by its release on Amazon Prime Video) painted her as its villain. Clips of Banks lecturing contestants for various perceived offenses, including gaps in their teeth and similar physical attributes, began to circulate on social media.
Former contestants also began speaking about the treatment they endured at Banks’ hands. “As much as we should applaud the subversive topics that ‘ANTM’ has covered in its reign thus far — physical and sexual abuse, homelessness, female circumcision, gayness (hi!!) — we must also accept that there were moments when those issues were clearly exploited for entertainment value,” Kim Stolz wrote for MTV (via Vox) in 2008.
Stolz was told by Banks to avoid emphasizing her sexuality as part of her modeling career.
Banks was further accused of berating contestants about their weight, allowing some contestants to darken their skin for photoshoots, and dismissing complaints about inappropriate touching from other models.
