Tyra Banks wins Emmy for outstanding talk show

This video clip from YouTube shows the 35th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards, live from the Kodak Theatre on June 20th 2008.

Tyra Banks is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished top supermodels and talk show hosts of all times today. But her road to superstardom and international fame was full of struggles. The biggest obstacles, to name a couple of many problems she faced in her earlier years, were because of her skin color and her size.

The supermodel-turned talk show host revealed in an interview recently that she was snubbed more times than other wannabes because she did not fit in with the modeling industry’s standard perception of beauty. It may be recalled that when she was trying her chances in modeling industry, the concepts of beauty were in straightjackets of preconceived notions, tilting very heavily in favor of the white models. It may also be worth noting that there were very few accomplished black models at that time.

Brazilian models have been hot favorites for quite sometime now. And they continue to be so, though now there is a marked shift in favor of dusky or darker skin colors and the exotic chiseled looks, as the entrance of more and more models from Asian countries, especially India, indicate. This trend is clearly visible in the recent fashion shows, especially in Paris and other European fashion shows and America that showcased some of the creations of the top fashion designers and leaders of the modeling industry.

“My biggest obstacle was that I was black and curvy”, Usmagazine.com quoted Tyra Banks as saying. She even claimed that a number of designers blacklisted her because of her “hips and breasts”. The 34-year-old supermodel revealed that modeling bosses tried to convince her mother to put her on a diet, but her mother refused. “My mother told me the whole thing as we were walking down the street in Milan,” Tyra Banks said. “My mother said, ‘They say you are too curvy. Let us go order pizza.’ We walked into a pizzeria, and we discussed a career change”, Tyra Banks added.