Tyra
Banks recently launched her own charity named Tzone Foundation to help boost
young girls' self-esteem. The model has always been a spokesperson for women of
different sizes and says that she doesn't want girls to have the same weight
insecurities she struggled with. She opened up on how her weight fluctuated
dangerously during her early years: ''Part of my desire to help these
girls is because of my own insecurities at that age. The summer I was 11 years
old, I lost 30 lbs in three months. It was the 1980s, during the Ethiopian
famine, and I got a lot of comments. My school thought I was ill. It was a
very painful time.''
She
says that while she was very thin for a while, she also went through a period
where she was taunted for being fat: ''Who would have thought
that the girl who was once forced to go to hospital because she was
too skinny would one day be called too fat? I lived both of those.''
Tyra
believes there is just one beauty ideal which Hollywood and the fashion
industry are responsible for and she thinks people's attitudes need to
change: ''The skinnier a lot of actresses are, or singers are,
or celebrities are, they tend to get a lot of coverage. A lot of,
'Oh, she's such a fashion darling, look at her, let's take
her picture as she goes shopping, let's put her on the cover of our
magazine.' The fashion industry has a very narrow definition of what
beauty is - specifically now, it's a size 0 [or] 00.''
