Tyra Banks Natural Hair

Tyra Banks Natural Hair

“The Tyra Show” came back for its fifth season yesterday! Perez Hilton (barf) stopped by as the first guest. But the main event was Tyra Banks, who is usually weaved to within an inch of her life, hosting the whole show with her natural hair. Unforch, Tyra’s real hair is anticlimactic—i.e. she’s not bald. Underneath those weaves and extensions she sashays down the red carpet in, she has regular, boring, shoulder-length brown hair. On yesterday’s show, though, she may have straightened it or had a relaxer in it or something, because it was not kinky in the slightest—which kind of defeats the purpose of her saying “It’s my real hair!” Doesn’t it?

Anyway, during the show, her hairstylist, Oscar, blow-dried and curled her natural ‘do, while she chatted with three women who have some serious issues about their real hair. One of her guests was a biracial woman whose white mom didn’t want people to know she had a black father. This evil mom shaved her daughter’s hair off as a kid because she didn’t want a “nappy-headed baby.”

The biracial woman said she straightens her hair for two hours every morning. “It makes me feel more white—it makes me feel like I fit in more,” she told Tyra. Even the woman’s boyfriend hadn’t seen what her actual hair looks like. But when her hair is unstraightened? She’s a curly-haired dead ringer for Jessica Szohr on “Gossip Girl.” Seriously, when Jimmy the boyfriend stroked her curls and told her she looked gorgeous, tears ran down my cheeks. Fake hair, Tyra says, is a choice. “Weaves [and] wigs are options,” she said. “Not something you need every day.”