Tyra Banks to Hillary Clinton: Model through It!

Posted by Myrna the Minx on January 16, 2008 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Updated FYI: BlogHer asked me to write a political update and I chose to do this instead. I sent it to BlogHer but they never received it.

Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Warner Bros.,Jason KempinI know its crazy, but BlogHer political editor Morra Aarons-Mele asked me to submit a “dispatch” about the Nevada caucuses; caucuses plural because there is a Republican AND a Democratic caucus in Nevada on January 19th. (I know, I have to be reminded sometimes too. Maybe one of the Republican candidates of state party leaders should sponsor a law suit too? Unfortunately, Nevada Republicans can’t rely on the unions like the Democrats, but its clear that lawsuits certainly help with the press coverage.)Anyway, as a result of my BlogHer invitation, I’ve been agonizing over what I should write about. Education? Energy? The first viable woman presidential candidate effect? The misogyny of the press demonstrated in appalling openness by the media last week? The possibilities are endless. Finally, though, after hours of agonized deliberation, I decided that I was going to write about something of vital important to all of us politically……Tyra Banks.

In case you haven’t heard, Hillary Clinton “sat down with Tyra” Monday to tape an episode of The Tyra Banks Show that will be broadcast on Friday. Originally, the Tyra taping had to be a reactive attempt by Clinton’s campaign to make nice with the African American community after her recent controversial comments on Martin Luther King, Jr., however, since Clinton and Obama held hands and sang kumbaya during last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas, cozying up to Tyra’s ethnicity is less important to Clinton now than cozying up to Tyra’s youthful demographic of aspiring top models, or at least women who would give up ten years of their life to achieve their goal weight (hat tip to 5Resolutions). In all seriousness though, nobody on the planet knows how to “model through it” better than Hillary Clinton. In Tyra speak, modeling through it means that you never let them see you sweat or cry. Look what happens when, after decades of modeling through it, Clinton had an emotional moment. Her tear up was enough to put the media hounds on witch burning duty as Salon’s Rebecca Traister characterized it:

The five days between Iowa and New Hampshire were discombobulating for anyone who had begun to get comfortable with the apparent ease with which American history had weirdly, smoothly made room for a female candidate. A woman had led the Democratic nominees for nearly a year with barely a whisper — save for the occasional unflattering wrinkled photo — of serious double-standard resistance from a nation that has yet to break its streak of white Christian guys sitting behind the Oval Office desk. It had all been so deceptively easy. But here were the buttoned up white boys over at Meet the Press going all Lord of the Flies on her. Cintra Wilson called the spectacle “a little witch-burny,” while Time’s Michael Scherer blogged about a call he’d received from a conservative pundit who told him, “The witch is dead, and life is going to change.” The pundits, Clinton’s opponents, her colleagues — they were making sport of Hillary’s immolation. They were rolling in it. Exulting in it. It reeked of a particular kind of relief, relief from the guys who had thought they were going to have to hold their noses and get pushed around by some dame. They were behaving like men who had received a sudden and unexpected reprieve, and classily reacted by pulling down their pants and peeing on her.

(Sorry BlogHer, but this piece can’t be all that unexpected from this blog which often shows an appreciation for women who the media seems to despise.)

Tyra is no Oprah, but from the advance press it seems like Banks didn’t do half bad. In fact, she did exactly what Clinton’s campaign hoped she would–present Clinton as a warm, funny, and sometimes vulnerable woman who can’t sing worth a damn but still wants to be President of The United States. If this were “The Brady Bunch,” Hillary Clinton would be our Jan to Tyra’s Marsha. It’s always about Marsha–Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! Except maybe this time.

I guess we won’t see Banks engaging in her usual self-referential display on Friday’s show–she is interviewing Hillary Clinton after all. I have to admit that I can’t help imagining that at the end of the show, seeing Clinton looking up at Tyra, standing on a dais in front of an enormous portrait of herself, shaking her hair in that lionesque way she has and then flashing those contact-enhanced baby blues before breathlessly pronouncing: “Hillary, You are America’s…Next…Top…Model!”

Clinton definitely needs to practice her posing though. Tyra is totally stealing her light in the photo above.