TYRA BANKS: 'KIss My Fat Ass!'

By Karu F. Daniels, AOL Black Voices

Tyra Banks may have dressed up like an obese woman --as an experiment for her daily talk show-- but the former 'Sports Illustrated' cover girl has taken umbrage to the notion that she is really "fat."

On the Feb. 1 edition of her eponymous, Emmy Award winning chatfest, Banks will confront the tabloids and gossip websites that ran unflattering photos of her in a bathing suit over the holidays with headlines blaring, "America's Next Top Waddle," "Tyra Porkchops," "Former Model Tyra Banks Reminds the World Why She is Now Retired from the Runway," and "Dude, Did Tyra Gain Like 50 Pounds Below the Neck?"

Always willing to go all out for her television viewers, the fashion icon --admitting to putting on some weight over the holidays -- stands in front of the televised studio audience in the exact same bathing suit next to a life-size cut-out of the tabloid photo to demonstrate how a simple shift in body position or a change in a camera angle can "add weight" in a photo creating the "money shot." She admits that in the photo "... the booty is a little thick," but shares with her audience how the tabloids are ridiculously obsessed with weight.

"Luckily, I'm strong enough and I have a good enough support system. . . My mama has helped me to be a strong woman so I can overcome these kinds of attacks, but if I had a lower self-esteem, I'd probably be starving myself right now. That's exactly what is happening to women all over this country," the former Victoria's Secret spokesperson said.

Banks adds, "I'm happy to be 20 or 30 pounds heavier than the average model and I felt like that was a positive image especially with what's going on now in society with models and women hating themselves and hating their bodies."

"So I have something to say to all of you who have something nasty to say to me or to other women that are built like me, women who sometimes or all the time look like this, women whose names you know, women whose you don't, women who've been picked on, women whose husbands put them down, women at work or girls at school, I have one thing to say to you: KISS MY FAT ASS!"

Alrightee then.

It is quite just that, too.