Those were the days, my friend
19th February, 2007
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America's hottest new talkshow host appears stripped down in black lace knickers to prove she has cellulite and performs a valuable community service by informing her audience of the yeast problems associated with synthetic underwear.
It helps that Tyra Banks used to be a full-time supermodel and probably feels more comfortable standing around in public in a g-string than most of us do in a windcheater. Tyra (she was the black woman with the firmly jutting bum who used to fight endlessly with Naomi Campbell) is tipped to become the biggest thing since Oprah herself. She's already pulling in more than $23 million a year, her ratings are through the roof and she's attracting an audience of women with money who are an advertising executive's dream. She's selling a mix of sex and intimacy spiced with humour and information, all packaged into a girl-friendly mix that TV rarely achieves. If it were filmed here in Queensland, Tyra's show would be the equivalent of sitting on the back deck with a couple of bottles and your best mates. And here we were thinking that supermodels had sacrificed their brains for their backsides. Turns out they're a bit like the rest of us, only with squillion-dollar pay cheques. Isn't it funny how familiarity has become the hottest commodity? Beer is no longer advertised by bimbos and he-men but by ordinary people being fearlessly stupid (which is normally what happens when people drink the stuff). Makeup is no longer advertised according to how gorgeous it can make you but by how much it will enhance your real self. Even real estate agents now sell houses based on what they'll do for your existing lifestyle, rather than boasting about how they'll elevate your social status. Does that mean the age of snobbery is over? Not when you still can't take a $6 bottle to your best friends' house for a Saturday night dinner. Not when your next-door neighbour can claim he's sending his son to a private school "so he's not left out". Not when perfectly normal people know the difference between a real and a fake Louis Vuitton. Not when seafood extender is a byword for social leprosy. Whatever happened to the casual pop-in? When a friend showed up on the back steps with a six-pack for a chat? (Some of us moved into apartments without steps, that's what.) Whatever happened to a long afternoon of gossip that segued into a curry and a cask? How come backyard cricket among adults has become a thing of the past? I'd give anything to return to the days when sitting on the back steps with a six-pack was the height of society. When knowing someone so well you could walk in through their back door was normal; when dropping a catch in the back yard was part of a regular weekend afternoon. I'd love to go back to the days when you could pull out the Monopoly board with a good mate and waste the afternoon. I'd be happy if everyone still had a laundry line under the house and friends had to fight their way through the underwear to get to the back steps. That's what Queensland was. The coolest footwear was barefoot and the best part about it was that nothing was hidden. Today we're as likely to meet friends for sushi on the river as to crack a cask on the deck and we're very lucky to have that option. But we should never make the mistake of believing one is better than the other. Tyra Banks will be big in Australia any second now. Her informality and her readiness to make a go of it are to be applauded. But let's not forget Tyra is making money from what we already knew - friendliness sells. Let's make sure we don't lose it. |
