Banksable

By LYNN HIRSCHBERG
Published: June 1, 2008

Correction Appended

Tyra Banks has 275 smiles. Like a star athlete who has perfected a jump shot or a curveball, Banks has studied, honed and mastered the smile. In her arsenal are the “surprise smile,” the “angry but still smiling” smile, the “flirting with boyfriend” smile and the “commercial” smile, which, like the rest of Tyra’s smiles, was designed and perfected when Banks, who is now 34, began modeling at 15. From the start of her career, when she was virtually plucked from an all-girl Catholic high school in Los Angeles and whisked off to Paris, to her days as a mass-market first-name-only supermodel strutting the catwalk in her underwear for Victoria’s Secret, Banks always treated modeling as a kind of beautiful science. Then, and now, the smiles were her secret weapons: they could compel, manipulate, seduce. Banks did not become a model to be a muse to designers or because she loved fashion. Modeling — and smiling — was a skill that could, if engineered and managed carefully, change the course of your life.
Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia
Video
Graphic
Enlarge This Image
Ruven Afanador for The New York Times

“Smiles come naturally to me, but I started thinking of them as an art form at my command,” Banks told me. “I studied all the time. I looked at magazines, I’d practice in front of the mirror and I’d ask photographers about the best angles. I can now pull out a smile at will.” Banks, who was wearing wide-leg jeans and a belted khaki trench coat that accentuated her height and her curves, demonstrated her most famous smile, the “smile with eyes.” Her catlike green eyes narrowed and began to sparkle and her lips slowly parted to reveal a row of perfect teeth. The smile was a little masklike and yet accessible. “Do you see?” she said, while still smiling. “You can try it, too.”

It was around 2 p.m. on a clear, crisp day in April and Banks was standing near a subway entrance at Union Square in Manhattan, about to shoot a special out-of-the-studio segment for the 500th episode of her talk show, to be broadcast later that month. In the fall, Banks will have three shows on the air, two of which she created and all of which she produced. Her talk show, “The Tyra Banks Show,” which had its premiere in 2005, is on every weekday (it is shown twice a day in many markets, including Los Angeles and New York) and her nighttime reality competition, “America’s Next Top Model,” the most successful show on the CW network, is entering its 11th 13-week cycle. “Top Model,” which pits would-be models against one another, is syndicated in more than 100 countries and has given birth to Banks’s newest venture, “Stylista,” the first show in which she will not appear and which features 11 aspirants competing to become a fashion editor at Elle magazine.

Like her hero, Martha Stewart, Banks wants, most of all, for her name to immediately suggest a distinct point of view. Her brand, like her trademark “tough but still smiling” smile, is consistent in all her shows: serious about the frivolous; empathetic and empowering; and always, always aimed at young women, across all races. It’s girly TV with a punch. Banks asked Hillary Clinton about her body image (“Does Senator Hillary Clinton look in the mirror and go, ‘I want it to be better’?”), her first date with Bill and her ambition to change the world. She played basketball with Barack Obama but also asked him to gaze into a crystal ball and tell her what he saw in his future (he said “the White House”). And while the contestants on “Top Model” may only long to be famous, Banks chides and lectures them (while wearing a low-cut dress) about having a strong work ethic and the vagaries of the fashion business. Banks understands that her audience — which is young and therefore coveted by advertisers — wants both to identify with her and to be inspired, and she has cast herself as their role model/teacher/fun friend.

Banks is not unconditional in her affection for the girls in her audience — she expects them (especially on “Top Model”) to apply themselves with vigor and to follow her example. It is not an accident that Banks posed with a sharp-looking cane in the last series of “Top Model” print ads and that her favorite word is “fierce.” Her message of optimism, reinforced by a heavy dose of discipline, has given her show one of the youngest demographics in daytime television. While about half of the viewers that Oprah attracts are 50 and older, 65 percent of Banks’s are under 50, and she especially embraces and influences a particular sector — young girls from high school to age 34. Both “Top Model” and “The Tyra Banks Show” are consistently near the top of that category and attract more than 13 million total viewers weekly, a larger overall audience than, say, “The View” or “Late Show With David Letterman.”

“I have to admit, I didn’t really expect her to have this kind of drive or creative ability,” said Leslie Moonves, the president and chief executive of the CBS Corporation, a parent company, along with Warner Brothers, of the CW network. “But I realized what a great producer she was when my daughter, who was then in college and is my best focus group, told me that ‘Top Model’ was her favorite show. I underestimated Tyra. I think we all did.”

Banks is strangely attracted to this sort of adversity. “I love being underestimated,” she said as Oscar James, her hairstylist, carefully arranged her reddish-brown curls. Like many models, Banks often wears wigs, and her hairstyles change shape and color daily from, among other looks, a brunette schoolgirl ponytail to a long blond fall with bangs to streaked Farrah Fawcett-style wings. “I love when they think, Oh, she’s just a model, she’s going to sit there and do nothing,” Banks continued. “When I was a model, my biggest obstacle was that I was black and curvy. When I went into producing, my biggest obstacle was that I was a model. But, as I say to the girls on ‘Top Model,’ anybody who is at the top of anything has taken risks and withstood criticism and hardship. I say: ‘You think I’m just a model? Well, then, let me show you.’ ”