'The Tyra Banks Show,'
back to you, Tyra
Everything about the show points back to the host
By Tom Conroy
Sep 14, 2009
Self-absorption can be fascinating to watch, but a little goes a long way. “The Tyra Banks Show” proves both the upside and the downside of that statement.
The talk show gives new meaning to the term vanity production, somehow turning almost every segment into a testimony to the wisdom and altruism of its namesake host.
In that respect, the show resembles Tyra’s other series, the CW’s long-running reality series “America’s Next Top Model,” in which she often will suddenly shift the focus from the competition to herself. She’ll model an outlandish outfit, show off her acting skills, demonstrate how to smile with your eyes or give life lessons to a spoiled contestant.
In early seasons of “Top Model,” it often seemed that those counseling segments were intended to furnish an audition reel for an “Oprah”-style talk show. Tyra eventually got her wish, but after four seasons, she still has a way to go.
Tuesday’s episode of “Tyra,” the fifth-season premiere and its first on the CW, kicked off with the host leading a “She Works Hard for the Money”-style outdoor dance segment, which segued into a montage of her getting ready for the taping.
She came onstage and announced that she was going to do the episode without a wig or hair extensions, pointing out that in previous seasons she had appeared without makeup, shown her cellulite and revealed photos before retouching.
Tyra said that she did these things not because she’s obsessed with her looks but because young women need to learn to be more accepting of their own looks. But is it that much of an improvement if you change “I’m ugly” to “All women are ugly without makeup”?
The hair reveal was meant to encourage African American women in particular to feel free to be seen without weaves or hair extensions. Again, Tyra gave an ambiguous message. Her real hair is ruler straight, and she had her personal hairdresser come out and style it into big soft curls.
She then announced that for the rest of the season she was going to tape the show in her real hair—except when she doesn’t feel it looks good enough, and then she’ll wear wigs.
Then a series of regular women who don’t like their hair were given makeovers that did without their wigs, extensions or straighteners. Makeover features almost always work on TV, but a plus to this one was that it took the focus off Tyra for a few minutes.
An interview with the online gossip reporter Perez Hilton was standard daytime-talk fare, with a heavy dose of self-promotion (for his new web site and tour). He brushed off Tyra when she tried to get him to admit that he is so mean on his blog because he was picked on as a child.
Altruistic Tyra persuaded him to stop making fun of celebrities’ children for six months, but this turned into her own self-promotion. He said he would stop if she would let him make an appearance on “America’s Next Top Model.”
A final segment plugged Tyra’s upcoming guest appearance on the CW’s “Gossip Girl.”
At the commercial breaks, the audience members got a chance to voice their own opinions in a small room called a “confessions booth.” One young woman said that Tyra’s hair looks great even when it’s natural. Another loved the way Tyra talked to a biracial girl with hair issues. And another agreed with Tyra that people shouldn’t make fun of celebrities’ children.
Tyra ended the episode with a plug for the show’s web site and her own online magazine.
Thursday’s show focused less on Tyra, and that turned out not to be a good thing.
In what the host introduced as “a ‘Tyra Show’ social experiment called Judgment Day,” a group of self-described mean girls checked out some women of varying size, shape and fashion style on TV monitors, then viciously criticized them. Surprise! The other women were in an adjacent room, listening.
When they all got together on Tyra’s stage, the mean girls defended themselves and got booed, the criticized girls defended themselves and got applauded, and Tyra tried to explain that we try to cut other people down when we feel insecure about ourselves.
Then a mixed group of men and women criticized the looks of couples on TV monitors. Perhaps for people who had tuned in late, Tyra pretended that it was just as much of a surprise when the couples turned out to have been listening and were about to join the mean people onstage.
This segment was hijacked by a black man who kept saying horrible things about darker-skinned black people. Tyra made him compare his supposedly light skin with that of the person he was attacking and then tried to psychoanalyze him—he suffers from self-hatred, she said. She told him that he needs to accept himself: “You are a brown chocolate beautiful Hershey’s Kiss.”
To her credit, she finally said that she thought he was saying this stuff just to get a rise out of the audience.
Basically repeating what she’d said before, Tyra concluded by saying that we all should check ourselves when we want to be judgmental because we’re probably just feeling bad about ourselves.
In other words, this episode wasn’t bad; it just made us feel bad about ourselves.
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