[UPDATE: Tyra and TypeF have since removed videos mentioned in this post. Full details on their response to this matter can be found at the end.]
I’m genuinely confused. Tyra Banks appears to have worked hard to forge herself as a woman who wants to give other women the best chance to meet their full potential. Yet her new fashion and beauty website appears to give women not just bad advice but mean girl advice…
What do I mean by mean girl advice? I mean the type that sounds like it’s in your best interest but in the end will only serve to have you appear like a clown or worse off than when you started.
But how could this be on a website which describes itself as “a community built on the celebration of diversity and the ideal of empowering women to be their very best”? Well…
I present Exhibit A: Refreshing Makeup Tips : How to Trim Eyebrows for a Professional Look
Professional? really? In what decade? Would Tyra seriously inflict these eyebrows on one of her girlfriends? Yet here on her website is a video practically saying “Oh yeah girl you can totally rock no eyebrows?”. Mmm hm, mean girl advice.
Exhibit B: How to get awesome hair. Relaxed African-American Hair
I just can’t! Firstly this just gives me one of those ‘Seriously, is it me?’ moments. This video needs only 2 steps. Step 1 buy a wig. Step 2 put on a head band. Simples.
Even then, none of those make awesome hair. Maybe ‘having-a-bad-hair-day-and-need-a-quick-fix’ hair but awesome? If this is awesome then tomorrow I’m going to do a video on how to have an awesome day:
“First you’re going to want to wake up, then you should breath in… and out…breathing is important because without it you might die… so there you have it. Everything you need to have an awesome day! The most important tool for this are your lungs.”
Useful right? About as useful as this video. Yep mean girl advice strikes again. Wasting minutes of someone’s life with such unhelpful ‘advice’ is pretty mean in my opinion.
Exhibit C: How to do fancy hair at home
This is basically the natural hair version of the previous video and had a number of obvious problems but I especially love that advice on putting on a headband could last 1 minute 38 seconds.
Then there’s my favourite little nugget of advice: “Don’t be afraid to adjust or play with the position of your headband”. Did you know adjusting a headband is something to be afraid of? Neither did I but now I’m concerned… What happens if I turn it the wrong away? Will it bite? Ain’t that just like a mean girl. Given you reasons to be scared of things you wouldn’t otherwise be afraid of.
I was going to leave it there but at the last minute I discovered this pièce de resistancé…
Exhibit D: Hairstyles & Techniques: How to determine hair texture
‘Does it wet when water touches it?’ Is this some kind of Jedi mind trick. Am I meant to understand what she’s saying? Maybe MI6 should scan this video for subliminal messages because her advice was not anything I understood. I swear at one point she says something like “if your hair is frizzy it’s poofy and if your hair’s poofy it’s large…”… For the love of rice and peas!!! What is she talking about?
I don’t even think I’ve shown the worse videos with this selection. Some of my other favourites include:
- How to style your hair using coconut oil aka how to not style your hair but just put pomade mislabelled as coconut oil in your hair and give incorrect information about it
- How to Loosen Tightly-Coiled Afro Hair Without Straightening aka How to use a blowdryer to get a style you won’t want
- How to keep eyeliner on overnight aka ???
I’m glad to see many natural hair and beauty vloggers are commenting on these videos on YouTube hoping to save any misguided souls from the perils of such mean girl advice.
I’m just seriously surprised that given a recent episode of ANTM All Stars was all about branding, how could Tyra allow her brand to be associated with this? Video titles are totally misleading, advice is just plain wrong and as for the subject matters!?! I’ve spotted 7 videos telling people how to put their hair into a ponytail.
Seriously is it April Fool’s Day? Is Tyra doing a Punk’d prank on the digital world? I speculated that the F in the site name stands for Fierce but with those videos it’s nothing but a huge Fail in my book.
UPDATE: In a wonderful turn of events Tyra has responded to the TypeF fiasco on her TypeF Youtube channel and once again won back the favour of the blogging community (no need to boycott ANTM after all)
Here’s her response:
Fola
September 26, 2011
I tweeted about the ‘How to do fancy hair’ one earlier today, I hadn’t seen the other videos you put up but they are all hilarious! These women have noooo clue, they should be embarrassed to label themselves as ‘professionals’!
The woman styling the lace front like it’s relaxed hair…really?! smh
A Simple Thing
September 26, 2011
I looked for the words but they were not to be found..
When the lady started grinning and posing in the front of the camera, I had a surreal, David-at-the-Dentist-”Is-this-real-life?” moment. How to flatten your fro? Really? REALLY?!
I’m waiting for Tyra to leap out of somewhere and show how this was a joke or a task for the ANTM or something.
gen
September 26, 2011
Oh my gosh…this is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Does it wet when water touches it? No, mine does not. And also, I tried the razor thing but forgot the alcohol and lets just say I ended up in A&E. I should’ve followed the advice. Harlem – this post is hilarious but what I am so shocked about is that it isnt some no body who is trying to make it big – its TYRA FREAKING BANKS! I love(d) her… now, I gotta go get me some ‘fancy hair’…now where did I put that leave in conditioner?
Hayley
October 12, 2011
this post really made me laugh!
those eyebrows are hideous!!
Such an awesome post thanks for sharing!!
Loving your blog and now following
Hayleyxx
http://hayleyhour.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/hayley.hour
Jennifer
October 31, 2011
This is really amusing. I know Tyra won’t approve of this at all. This is really giving a lot of bad impression.