Dear Tyra

Dear Tyra,

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve decided to end your show after five long seasons, but I understand you have bigger weaves to try.

True, you did stop wearing those weaves this year to show one can be naturally beautiful - after having her hair professionally done by an on-salary stylist who follows her obediently around the world.

Oh what a wicked web we leave, when first we practice without a weave.

---

I for one think it’s great that after over 700 episodes of The Tyra Show, you have finally shut the doors, but not your mouth.

Sure, to some it may have seemed a blatant contradiction to produce a show like America’s Next Top Model, while simultaneously producing a talk show with a mission to “expand the narrow perceptions of beauty.”

But you were never contradictory at all. You actually espoused the same self-promoting, narrow-minded views on both shows!

BTW, on ANTM, I especially love how as each season progresses the show becomes more and more about you.

Like, in the opening credits. Each newer season has highlighted you more and more, until the opening credits pretty much only have shots of you with a quick shot of the contestants.

(And I bet it’s a pic you took too!)

A 'plus-sized' ANTM model

Oh, and I was so happy to see that you regularly tossed in a plus-sized model or two. As size-6 women, they could easily find work in something such as Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign.

Not to forget, as you say, “A smart model is a good model.”

Agreed.

Albert Einstein would have been hot walking down a Calvin Klein runway. How he wasted his life.

Speaking of runways, may I congratulate you on re-signing with IMG, your former model management company, to, in your own words, "Align myself with brands that I believe in."

Boy, you are so much smarter than I. So much so, I had to look that quote up in my Publicityspeak to English dictionary where I found its definition:

Align myself with brands that I believe in.
Finding companies to pay me to shill their stuff.

Thinking back to my fav episodes of The Tyra Show, many flashes of brilliance singed my mind…

For instance, there was that one show about “Not caring what people think of you.”

And based upon that episode alone, there is no reason why you should care what anyone thought of your later episode “People need to care about what others think of them.”

Certainly, you are always tackling body image issues. You never forget to say that real beauty comes from within; yet, somehow the importance of superficial beauty never fails to supersede that statement.

Forcing us to think. I like it.

And hey, remember that show where you taught young women to use self-expression as a tool to find one’s true self, when you chose new, fierce looks for them?

---

Tyra changing the world one fat suit at a time.

(That wasn't quite as good as when you donned a fat suit and felt the plight of the heavy, or got "strip searched" in a women's jail - without having to take off any clothing - and cried as you "experienced" for a day what those hapless convicts endure for a lifetime.)

Or that other episode, with a really overweight self-loathing twentysomething? You countered her self-deprecation by telling her that she had really beautiful eyebrows, and that you “always wanted an arch like hers.”

Well said. Beauty is truly in the eyebrow of the beholden.

But that’s what you do. You lift people to great heights, even if sometimes you are forced to kick them down for ratings and/or your highly-arched ego…

It was endlessly funny when you would invite guests on your panel only to belittle them or have the audience belittle them.

You didn’t always humiliate though. Sometimes you just exploited.

Like the woman with two vaginas. A classic.

But the best – the ultimate humdinger – was the November 2, 2006 show:

“Tyra Exposes Modelling Scams.”

As you explained, you took this undercover sting straight from the Dateline and Chris Hansen textbook To Catch a Predator.

Funny, I always took issue with that predator show; I found it disingenuous. That said, it wasn’t driven by the same ingenuity as your exposé.

Dateline’s show lured child predators with an actor posing as jailbait. Your show lured teenaged girls desperately in search of a modelling career - that you glorify - to a rouse, where paid actors played seedy photographers.

And after the “photographers” got the young girls to pose  c o m p l e t e l y  naked, you couldn’t take it anymore, and strutted to the scene, surprising the poor muffin-bearing girl with you and your camera crew, à la Chris Hansen.

How embarrassing… for you. Difficult to watch, I know.

And good on you for not humiliating the naïve girls and blurring out their naughty bits, so only a room full of strangers and camera-toting men would actually see them.

But even though the audience never saw the nudity, we did see the naked truth.

So now you are moving on up with Bankable Enterprises.

I look forward to your new projects that aim to improve self-esteem and serious body image issues.

Modelland will surely be an inspiring book, with “a fiercely dressed woman in stilettos who saves the day.”

As well, those movies you are producing about “fiercely dressed women in stilettos who save the day” will be stellar, or stiletto, as it were.

I wonder woman, how nobody has come up with something like that before. You are a visionary who is taking us so far beyond our time.

It just makes me want to go out in my bikini and high heels and vanquish crime and terrorism. I know, I better make sure to have the right shade of lipstick on, and “smile with my eyes” or “smize.”

---

Finally, I can’t end this letter without mentioning your infamous “Kiss my fat a$$ speech.”

When you stood there in your bathing suit, shimmered legs – and of course, stilettos – talking about how body image DOESN'T define you…

Well, first, your weave looked fierce. Second, I thought you were about to go out and fight crime and terrorism. Very inspirational.

Oh, and congrats on the success of your journey. You know, the weight loss journey you publicized after that show where you took great pride in your weight.

(It’s okay though… Your a$$ managed to remain fat - for a model.)

So, finally, I must wish you the best of luck and my most heartfelt congratulations.

You are a woman who has waged war against the increasing objectification of women’s body image, while you have succeeded to earn your wage based upon the very thing you fight against.

In the end, it says a lot that you won two Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Talk Show.”

Thus, I need not say any more.

I will just let this speak for itself.

Fiercely,
Dahlia

---