14 DAY TRIAL // If a young Tyra Banks wanted to start her modeling career today, she couldn't because she'd be too fat for the size 0 trend that the industry is favoring right now. The model herself makes the claim in an open letter to The Daily Beast.
Just recently, Vogue magazine announced that it was instating a ban against all underage models and all models who showed signs of an eating disorder or unhealthy habits.
The move, Tyra says in her letter, will most likely change the industry because it will encourage designers to hire more or less regular-sized models, thus discouraging unhealthy practices in these.
The size 0 controversy has been ranging on for years now but, Tyra points out, back when she first started working, she wasn't even aware that such a size existed.
She reckons she was a size 4 at first (with the industry standard set between 4 and 6), but she too had issues when she started growing up and designers deemed her too “curvy” to hire her.
Luckily, she had her mother by her side, and together they managed to turn a potential career killer into her biggest advantage.
“When I started modeling, I used to see models who seemed unhealthy backstage at fashion shows. They appeared to be abusing their bodies to maintain a certain weight. These girls were booked over and over again for countless fashion shows and photo shoots,” Tyra says.
When her body began to change as she moved from teenage to adulthood, Tyra was told she was “too fat.”
“In my early 20s I was a size four. But then I started to get curvy. My agency gave my mom a list of designers that didn’t want to book me in their fashion shows anymore. In order to continue working, I would’ve had to fight Mother Nature and get used to depriving myself of nutrition,” the star recalls.
“As my mom wiped the tears from my face, she said, 'Tyra, you know what we’re going to do about this? We’re going to go eat pizza.' We sat in a tiny pizzeria in Milan and strategized about how to turn my curves into a curveball. In a way, it was my decision not to starve myself that turned me into a supermodel, and later on, a businesswoman,” Tyra writes.
Today, she's sitting at the top of an empire and all she can do is counsel models about the importance to consider their health in their quest to be just the type of woman designers are looking for.
Vogue, the fashion bible, is a pioneer in saying no to size 0, but the real change on this starts at home, with every mother and her daughter.
“To moms everywhere, we need to educate our girls not to fall prey to thinspirational images of beauty. So where do we start? By being very careful about how we talk about our own bodies in front of our daughters,” Tyra says.
“We can show our daughters diverse images of beautiful women: curvy, tall, short, and everything in-between. Moms, you are the first and most influential role model in your girl’s life. Use that power. Teach her to love herself and everything that makes her unique,” she adds.
Here is Tyra Banks' open letter to The Daily Beast. Below is a video of her appearance on Good Morning America, in which she explains what motivated her to write it.