WWTD?

While I really like my day job, lately it has been cutting into my time with the special lady in my life. I haven’t seen her for weeks and, frankly, I think it’s making me a little unstable. Without the infallible guidance of her unique and caring insights, her wealth of world experience and her fashion and beauty tips, I’m a mess. I really miss Tyra.

Tyra Banks is an enigma. One day she’s sharing makeup tips or memories with one of her celebrity friends and the next day she’s in jail. Jail! That is hard hitting journalism! When she started the episode off by looking soberly into the camera and saying, “Today… I am going… to prison,” I knew we were in for a classic. And Tyra did not disappoint.

In order to really understand what it would feel like to go… to prison, Tyra went through the whole process of checking-in–probably not the right term–which required her to remove all her makeup and her clothes. Then Miss Tyra, wearing nothing but shower shoes, bent over and coughed.

Once inside, Tyra had one of the inmates put her hair in cornrows, then she posed for some brooding photos in front of a chain-link fence. You could tell she was a supermodel because you could almost hear her inner monologue through her eyes.

“Yeah, I killed my man,” Tyra seemed to be thinking. “But I still loves him. He done me wrong but was my baby daddy and I loves him. Girl, that’s what lovin’ a man will get you; 25-to-life. I should know. I’m in… prison.”

Once her photo shoot was complete, Tyra met with some women prisoners, gave them a pep talk and encouraged them to stay on the straight-and-narrow when they get out. I’m pretty sure they will after that.

Even though she’s a former supermodel while I just like to look at myself in the mirror, I feel a kinship with Tyra. She really understands me. At least she tries to. If ever Tyra doesn’t understand someone, all she has to do is go undercover and find out what it’s like to be them.

One time Tyra went undercover as a fat girl. She put on a padded suit and had her face made up really fat and wore weird sunglasses. I’m not sure what the sunglasses had to do with being fat. Poor Tyra found out how hard it is for a fat girl to get a man by going on a series of blind dates. When the unsuspecting guys did not immediately take to fat Tyra upon first meeting her, she took great pleasure in revealing who she really was and chastising the jerks for dismissing a girl based on her size.

I’m pretty sure the fact that she was confrontational and uninteresting on each of her dates had nothing to do with anything. Man, did she ever give those guys a wakeup call. And ever since, fat confrontational yet uninteresting girls in weird sunglasses have been all the rage, haven’t they?

Sometimes Tyra lets us into her world a little and we learn that not everything is as perfect as it may seem. For example, did you know that Tyra Banks has a phobia of dolphins? It’s true. It must be really hard for her to lead a normal life. I mean, it’s bad enough she can’t even go grocery shopping without the paparazzi attacking her, let alone ocean mammals.

On one show, Tyra tried to face her fear by getting into a tank with some dolphins. It made her cry and scream and hyperventilate. Now, because of her carrying on, dolphins have a phobia of supermodels, which I’m sure I don’t have to tell you is going to cause a lot of problems. The phobia episode did have some positive outcomes though. For example, Tyra cured a woman of her fear of pennies by burying a really expensive watch at the bottom of a fish tank filled with the terrifying copper discs and insisting that she stick her arm in and get it. Tyra does a lot of good for a lot of people.

Some of those people are gay people. For example, who else would have been brave enough to pit full-time lesbians against part-time lesbians so that the full-timers could tell the wannabes how offended they are by straight girls making out on the dance floor and Girls Gone Wild? And when you’re a straight woman married to a gay man I can’t think of a better way to address your situation than to go on national television and talk to a model. Tyra also has many gay friends, all of whom are named Jay. This has hugely popularized both being gay and being Jay.

Whenever I find myself in a tough spot I take a deep breath and ask myself, “What would Tyra do?” As long as there are no dolphins in said tough spot, I always find the answer. And the answer is always something fierce. Just like Miss Tyra herself.