Tyra Banks Says Body Shape and Skin Color Need to Stop Being Trends in Fashion

Tyra Banks is calling for more diversity in the fashion industry.
The legendary model, who’s back as the host and lead judge on a new cycle of America’s Next Top Model, responded to a fan who asked whether she thinks fashion folk are “liberal” and why it’s so tough to change standards of beauty and prevent “racially insensitive ad campaigns.”
“The fashion industry isn’t liberal. The fashion industry and the powers that be, most of the people are liberal leaning, and liberal living—their personal choices or how they were born is very in the liberal category,” she said during an AOL Build panel on
Tuesday. “However, there are other people in the industry that are the opposite in terms of the things and the choices that they make and what they present with their power.”

Banks went on to specifically discuss race relations in the industry and the fact that models of various ethnic backgrounds are not continuously cast.
“To me, race is not a trend. My skin has looked like this since six months after I came out of my mama. … My skin is not a trend, your skin is not a trend, your skin is not a trend, we are who we are so we should not go in and out of fashion,” she said, moving on to make a similar point about shape.
“My booty, her booty, should not go in and out of fashion, that should just be. The trend should be what we put on our bodies, not our bodies,” she said as she sat alongside a panel that included Top Model judges like body-positive model and activist Ashley Graham. “That’s the part of fashion that I don’t like.”