Over the weekend Tyra Banks tweeted a set of pictures of herself gussied up as other supermodels, most of whom happen to be white, and a bunch of people are pissed that not more people are pissed.
Because it’s whiteface, you guys! It’s super-offensive to white people. Don’t you remember when white people were enslaved and forced to work on plantations and generally have no freedom? Yeah me neither, BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T.
For those of you who don’t already know and don’t want to bother with Wikipedia, blackface originated specifically to make fun of and degrade slaves. In other words, minstrel shows weren’t exactly flattering.
For a photo exhibit in New York, Tyra dressed up as Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Cara Delevingne, and 10 other models (plus herself as a teenager, because why not) to pay homage to them (and herself). I doubt she would’ve gone to all the trouble of making herself over to look exactly like them just to be like “BLACK POWER, BITCHES. Whites are the suck.”
And it does look like she went to a lot of trouble, though she could’ve saved herself some, at least for the Kate Moss pic, for which she obviously told the makeup artist “Make me look like a junkie who’s been sitting in a cold shower for an hour or so.”
Didn’t she know she could’ve achieved the same look with a week of not eating and a bit of heroin? Maybe a few nostrils of coke for good measure? She did manage to throw a bit of shade Moss’ way, telling everyone she had to hide her “booty & boobies like a pro, for a pro” to look like her, which is clearly code for “Kate Moss is a flat-assed, flat-chested teenage boy and could not hope for bootylicious curves like mine.” BURN.