Tyra Banks “Apologizes” About Bi-Racial Photo Shoot
November 21, 2009 by Erin Balser
This week’s episode of The Tyra Banks Show was all about America’s Next Top Model. The audience was introduced to the final four, Erin, Jen, Laura and Nicole, and the Fan Favorite competition was introduced. Tyra also gave Rachel Echelberger a second chance (Remember – she was eliminated after the Wilhelmina challenge?) by announcing BMG Models wants to sign her.
The biggest moment of the episode came when Tyra attempted to explain the biracial photo shoot from this cycle. She explained her rationale behind the shoot and then apologized to anyone who found it offensive.
I want to be very clear: I, in no way, put my Top Models in blackface. I’m a black woman. I am proud. I love my people and the struggle that we have gone through continues and the last thing that I would ever do is be a part of something that degraded my race.
I’m sorry to anybody that watched ‘Top Model’ and was offended by the pictures because they didn’t understand the real story behind them or even if you did see the whole episode and you were still offended, I truly apologize because that is not my intention. My intention is to spread beauty and break down barriers.
Tyra must have known that this photo shoot would be controversial. Because of this, I find her apology disingenuous. Stand by what you did, or don’t. I still don’t get how changing the color of the girls’ skin celebrates all skin tones and races. Given Tyra’s reasoning for the shoot, a more appropriate photo shoot would be to uncover the contestants’ personal heritage and then style them to celebrate that.
What do you think? Was the photo shoot offensive? Was Tyra right in apologizing?
Image: Pottle Productions Inc
I saw her apology and she started it off with how she was “hurt by the malicious things being said.” Love those type of apologies. I didn’t do anything wrong really. It’s everyone else’s fault for not getting the “whole story” behind the shoot. What’s even worse was that these girls knew nothing about the heritages they were portraying- how does that break down any barriers? Not impressed with her apology. Not impressed with the shoot.
i don’t think she should have apologized…it’s not a big deal, she made the shoot as real and believable as she possibly could. people need to shut up about it, its not racist its celebrating different cultures in a high fashion perspective…
they did it in cycle 4..
and blackface..are you serious? i hate our society.
The apology was not for doing the photoshoot. She apologized to those that were offended by it. I appreciate the fact that she stated precisely what I felt when these headlines first popped up about the episode. Facts were omitted to make it more salacious and the term “blackface” used to evoke the raw emotions ppl feel toward the images it conjures. I think in the context of the competition to take on the task of finding out the genealogy of the girls (assuminy they even know their ancestry) was too cumbersome a task. I believe only Erin expressed ignorance about the culture she was given. How it broke barriers? It highlighted cultures not commonly shown. Anyway, moving on to cycle 14.
No apology was needed. There was nothing malicious or offensive about the concept. As a member of one of the cultures that were represented, I was not offended in the slightest…Moving on!
Eh, I do think it was blown out of proportion but I also agree with fran ward about Tyra’s “apology” and the whole artisitic vision and people not being able to understand. It’s typical Tyra. That being said, I read a comment on a blog from someone of Hawaiian descent who basically said they were offended by the shot because (and again, this is typical Tyra) Tyra’s definition of Hapa was incorrect. Basically, this “controversy” could have been avoided if Tyra or her staff had done some homework.
I saw that quote too. I’m just torn. Tyra didn’t apologize for the photo shoot, she apologized for offending people, that’s true. But if she had done a bit of research she could have created a much better, more artistic photo shoot that celebrated cultures and avoided potential controversy without painting the girls’ skin. Her intent was not racist or malicious, but she needs to be a bit more aware. Unless the controversy was intentional to draw attention to the show (which I doubt) which in case, she did her job.
the thing is she painted the girl’s skin before and people cared less she didn’t think it was going to be a big deal. she shouldn’t apologize for the photoshoot she and her producers did nothing wrong by making the photoshoot as real as possible since she did apologize people are still talking about it and it could have been faded it was almost a month ago.
I don’t think it’s anything to be offended over necessarily; it’s not as though she took a while girl, colored her black, slapped on some red lipstick and put on a minstrel show. The goal was to highlight mixed-race people using elaborate costumes, and she succeeded. Let me ask you this, how would doing the same photoshoot without the extreme makeup make things any better?
That being said, she’d already done this before in Cycle 4, so I’m not sure why she felt the need to repeat it. It’s not offensive, but it is awkward, especially when someone like Erin (as someone previously said) wasn’t properly educated on the backgrounds she was portraying. It yielded great pictures, especially Nicole and Brittany, and if you found it offensive then you need to calm down. Take a break… eat a cookie! But Tyra probably shouldn’t do this again.
As a Taiwanese, rational issues is not really a big thing for me. Rational issues are only stirred up during election.
I like the biracial photos. I’m not offensed. Maybe it’s controversal for countries like America, nevertheless, it’s okay for Taiwanese. I’m sure most of the Taiwanese audience love the theme of the photos according to the response in my blog.
quite frankly the shoot was beautiful and if people can’t see that and want to find something offensive, wrong or degrading then thats they’re own problem there’s a difference between something being truly offensive and downright just looking for a reason to complain.
People are always being so judgemental ,Tyra is already giving young women from all around the country a chance to become a star , love her for what she is doing and stop findin ways and comments to put her down ,I love you Tyra
i dont find anything offensive about that shoot or the concept, i dont recalled ppl making a big deal when she did a similiar shoot, i think in cycle 4, i think the girls were extremely beautiful when portraying the mixes they were assihned, that was NOT BLACKFACE, for ppl to even want to critize this is complety ridiculous. critize the cover of a french vouge which had blackface + google hapa, tyra’s defination sounds right 2 me. no one can say that looking on those photos evoked disgust, if it di look again at jen’s and laura’s photo simple BEAUTIFUL
I loved this episode and found it to be clever. When I started hearing about the controversy, I found it a bit peculiar. I thought the girls looked stunning! Claiming that it is ‘blackface’ is a bit rediculous. People claimed that Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls were a modern Minstrel show, so people are damned if they use the correct race, and damned if they don’t.
I am a caucasian actor, but I currently play Japanese, Chinese, and Indian characters at work. I do not think much of it, and neither does the audience. I think that if the pictures came out before the rest of the season, there wouldn’t be as much drama about the episode.
Just my two cents…
I posted a similar comment before and I’ll say it again. I am not offended by this photoshoot, what offended me was that they kept the darkest contestant her natural skin colour and felt changing the skin tones of all the other contenstants was a positive message. If Sundai’s ‘bi-racial’ character was half russian then why wasn’t she portrayed lighter?
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