Despite everything that Tyra Banks has accomplished, I still brushed her off as a vapid celebrity whose modus operandi was attention. I’m not so sure about that anymore. Yesterday’s episode gave me a new respect for her. Not only did she reveal her real hair after years of lace fronts and extensions, but she interviewed controversial shock blogger Perez Hilton, and made an interesting deal with him.
Tyra has been doing a series of episodes about people’s hair, body image and self-esteem issues and while I feel that many of her episodes in that vein were very surface and didn’t dig deep enough, the biggest example she could have set was by making her own effort to let go of certain hangups she had.
She declared September 8 “National Real Hair Day” but said that she’s going to wear more of her real hair throughout the season in an effort to take The Tyra Show to the “next level” and “be more real.” I like that she’s taking initiative to hopefully inspire women to let go of insecurities, but I’ll be watching this season (my eyebrows are still a little raised). Hopefully it’s not just a marketing scheme. Either way, I commend Tyra for being so brazen.
Speaking of fearlessness, I’m glad Tyra took on Perez Hilton. She didn’t grill him as intensely as I wanted her to (and in a way that gossip bloggers deserve) but she stuck it to him to where you could see that some of her questions made him squirm. Plus, she revealed that things said by people like him are hurtful. We forget that celebrities are human beings too. In the end, she made a deal with him where he could not say or post anything bad about celebrity children under 18. We’ll see how well that goes.
Overall, I’m happy that Tyra seems to be taking a new approach to her show but I hope to see better researched topics and that her conscious attempts to be more conscientious are genuine. However, so far, she seems to be off to a good start. Work it.