Tyra Banks recreates her Sports Illustrated cover – for Black History, y’all

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Ever since those photos came out of Tyra Banks looking not very svelte in a bathing suit, it seems like she’s been obsessed with proving that she’s not fat.

You might have heard about the show she did a couple weeks back where she wore the same bathing suit that appears in the photo to prove that she’s not that fat. She even got her hands on the other photos taken at the shoot that day – the unretouched ones – to show how un-fat she was. But if she was that big, it would be ok, because large women are beautiful too, but she’s not, not that there’s anything wrong with it, but she’s not that large right now, but that’s not to say she may not look like that one day in the future and if she did, it would be totally cool, but you know, she just doesn’t look like that now. (That’s pretty much how the show went – I’ve never seen anything more self-contradictory in my life.) Here’s a clip:

But yesterday’s show just put me over the edge. I guess she wasn’t satisfied with her last I’m-not-fat attempt, so she decided to recreate her famous Sports Illustrated cover – pink polka-dot bikini and all.

As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, she actually had the balls to make this a Black History Month event! Because she was the first African-American swimsuit model to appear on the cover of SI, and “it enabled young women of color to realize that they CAN…DREAM…BIG!” Check out this video:

It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. (And don’t even get me started on how badly Photoshopped the final product was.) At one point during the show, Tyra said that when that cover came out, a “Caucasian gentleman” told her that for the first time in his life, he felt it was okay for him to be attracted to black women, because he was taught growing up that they were taboo.

So basically, to Tyra, the fact that men of all races felt comfortable jerking off to that picture, was a moment to remember in Black History. What a milestone.

Well, I was inspired by Miss Banks’ courage, so I decided to do something special for all of you, the loyal readers of Racialicious.

As you might know, it’s Chinese New Year. What better way to honor 5,000 years of Chinese civilization than by recreating my historic Stuff magazine cover shoot? I managed to hunt down the same photographer, the same crew, the same brown bathing suit, we even went to the same spot on the same beach in Hawaii. I’m really pleased with how the photos came out. Have a look yourself.

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