American Dream

harpersbazaar.com ^ | 08/05/08 | harpersbazaar

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American Dream From the runway to the Oval Office, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE for Tyra Banks. Bazaar casts her as First Lady while she reflects on being a model citizen and the politics of fashion.

Tyra Banks is sitting on the huge corner sofa in her office in New York, impressing on her interviewer the fierceness of Abigail Adams. Resisting the obvious choice of Jackie Kennedy ("although she was a fox"), it's the second first lady who has Banks in awe. "I watched the John Adams series on HBO, and I was so taken by her that I Googled everything I could," she explains, straightening the folds of her businesslike-but-bodacious Zara sundress. "She stood up for women. She was able to speak her mind about women's issues with her man, and he actually, truly listened to her."

Today, though, it's a rather more modern potential first lady who has Banks compelled. When it came to paying homage to Michelle Obama for this story, Banks found the process "surreal." "It's kind of embarrassing," she confesses, "but in my early 20s, I used to want to be a princess. But I didn't want to have to marry somebody in order to do it! Of course, I don't see the position of first lady as a princess, where it's something you have to marry into. With Barack Obama, his becoming president is them becoming president because Michelle was there from the beginning. Without Michelle, he wouldn't be there." Or, as she pronounces to her Tyra Banks Show camera after her Oval Office portrait, "Michelle Obama, you're one hot mama."

A number of presidential candidates have appeared on Banks's talk show (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards), and she's after Michelle Obama to appear this fall. She has met her before, noting she was "so warm and so gracious. She's got that direct-eye-contact, truly-connecting thing. She's not a 'ha, ha, ha' type." She smiles and continues, "And I love that she's tall."

"Being first lady is not just about being the wife but really taking command and having true vision," Banks adds, noting the infinitely tricky terrain of being a woman in politics. "Hillary Clinton was on my show in January, and I asked her, 'Do you ever just get terrified to say anything? Because everything is so scrutinized and picked apart and dissected?' And she said, 'Honestly, Tyra, yes!' And it's the same for Michelle Obama, especially with her and Barack being the first, you know, in so, so many ways."

Banks, 34, in her own way, is a "first" too. Over her 19-year career, in front of both the fashion lens and the television camera, she has variously been anointed a supermodel, a "hero and pioneer," and, of course, "the new Oprah." (The New York Times Magazine also recently threw in a comparison to Martha Stewart.) And while she will joke that she got here — the host and executive producer of both America's Next Top Model and the Emmy-winning The Tyra Banks Show, about to enter its fourth season, and one of Time magazine's "People Who Shape Our World" — by being, yes, fierce, what's cool about Banks, who now earns an estimated $23 million a year, is that she was never too cool to be commercial. By doing so, she hasn't just broken borders — of ethnicity, of cynicism, of fashion cliché — she has broken ground.

Banks still gets much merriment from fashion. She remembers a conversation with a fellow "very famous" supe after she retired from the runway in 2005 (you may recall a particularly pyrotechnical Victoria's Secret show with buckets of glitter and a pair of 12-foot black wings): "I told her to make sure she had a plan. She looked like I slapped her in the face. She was like, 'What do you mean? I love modeling. I will always model!'" Banks smiles sagely. "But you need to treat yourself like an athlete and know that it is not going to happen. I mean, what are you gonna do — commentate on ESPN?" She bursts out laughing. "And here comes Gisele doing the Clydesdale clomp in Stella McCartney."

Not least because she has shown models there is life after the last twirl on the catwalk, Banks is indeed a pioneer. It's easy to forget now, in a world filled with projects runway, photography, styling, make me a supermodel/fashion editor/star, that when Top Model first aired, in May 2003, there were no other fashion reality shows on the box. "I think I showed the girls that it doesn't have to be over," Banks, who shares a similar gene with Project Runway's Heidi Klum, says now. "They don't have to marry a rich man and trade in their pretty."

Banks has traded in her pretty for something far more compelling: a voice in the culture (especially to young women; some of the Tyra show's 1.5 million viewers are as young as 12) that is growing in influence every year. Her inclusive, enthusiastic promotion of self-esteem, positive body image, confidence, and beauty — even frank discussions on female anatomy, with a puppet — has struck a chord with women, while her "You go, girl!" persona has won her something of a camp following as well. (More than one fashion publicist confesses to having multiple Tyra shows on the DVR.) Banks's finest moment to date occurred last year, after unflattering swimsuit pictures of her were printed in the tabloids. She appeared on her show in the same swimsuit with a hear-me-roar call to "all of you that have something nasty to say about me ... [about] women who've been picked on, women whose husbands put them down ... or girls in school. I have one thing to say to you: Kiss my fat ass!"

Banks, who is infinitely more low-key in person, recalls, "I had a woman come up to me when I was seeing Rent once. She told me she was going to commit suicide until she saw that show. I held her hand and cried with her in the aisle. I get that kind of stuff; it doesn't stop."

If Banks ever reached the highest office in the land, she would dress the part. "I'd wear a V-neck shift and a two-inch heel. Even if the president were taller, I would keep them low. Otherwise it gets a little too sexy. I mean, I was a high-fashion model, but I was also a swimsuit model and a lingerie model, so I would constantly be making sure that I wasn't looking like that." As for hair, perhaps a Jackie/Michelle-style flip? "Nooo, my question isn't to flip or not to flip. Mine would be to weave or not to weave." What would be her Secret Service acronym? She pauses, smiles broadly, and replies, "KMFA: Kiss My Fat Ass."

A modern first lady, if she followed the Tyra prescription, would first smile. (Banks reportedly has a professional arsenal of 275.) "Oh, I want her to not take herself too seriously," she says. "She'd need to know how to take a fierce picture but at the same time be able to eat fried chicken, have grease on her fingers, and be okay with getting photographed like that, too. I'd want her to feel like every child in America is hers — to have a true connection." Her expression turns serious, then she winks. "I would also want her to know how to beat her own face. That means do her own makeup. In the end, the first lady should be her man's rock and his boulder and his mountain. And she should be calling about 50 percent of the shots!"

Banks first met Barack Obama at Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball in 2005. "My friend Kimora Lee Simmons and I were walking around the ball," she remembers. "We had on these big Cinderella dresses — hardly anyone wore white tie, but we both did — and then we see Senator Obama. He goes, 'Hi, ladies,' and I told him, 'I want to congratulate you on that speech. It was gorgeous.' At the time, there was just a hint of him running for president. But then Kimora starts talking crazy, just totally embarrassing me. She walks away, and I'm like, 'Senator Obama, I have to apologize for my friend. She's almost like family, I've known her since I was 17 years old, and with family, you love them but sometimes you want to say that you're not related to them.' And he said, 'What are you talking about? You don't think that I could be down and talk crazy like that? You think politicians are all stiff and can't relate? Come on, girl.'"

When asked about the symbolism of the first black president of the United States, Banks pauses for a second and starts to tear up. "When Barack won the nomination, I just started bawling. I started calling all these people, and everybody was talking to me like I was crazy. They're like, 'Well, he hasn't won yet,' but I'm like, 'Yes, he has, because he's gotten this far.' I think he gives everybody so much hope."

She grabs a tissue. "I did a talk show, and we were testing racism with little kids. We showed them a picture of a black man in a suit and a picture of a white man in a suit. And we asked, 'Which one can be president?' These kids were all of different races — black, white, everything — and not one of them said that the black man could be president. Not one. So what gives me tears is if Barack Obama wins, kids are going to say that a black man can be president, too."

For Banks, for whom self-esteem is a not just a passion but a cause, it's bigger than simply that. "I think it will give so many people — black, Latin, Asian, even white people that feel forgotten--it gives them hope. I did not think I would see it in my lifetime, and I'm only 34."

So, "Ms. Banks" ("When I was a model, they called me Tyra; now it's Ms. Banks") would bring some fierce grace to the White House. But she would be ever of the people. Her final first lady shot done, she turns back to the Tyra camera: "Barack and Michelle, you might be going to the White House." She flashes a dazzling, supermodular smile. "But I'm going to White Castle."

Find this article at: http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/cover/tyra-banks-interview-0908

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