In order to commemorate 21-year-old porn star Sasha Grey’s mainstream debut in The Girlfriend Experience this year, let’s revisit Grey’s 2007 appearance on The Tyra Banks show. Grey appeared on Tyra at age 18, after having spent eight months working in the porn industry. While I generally find porn kinda boring, Tyra is so out-of-control in this clip that I thought it might be worthwhile to reminisce.

Now that Grey has made the transition to mainstream film, perhaps Banks regrets characterizing Grey as just another lost kitten in need of a good cry and a loving embrace from Ty-Ty. When Grey refuses to play along, Banks engages in a televised exercise of hatin’ the player, not the game.

How condescending is Banks to Grey in this clip? Let us count the ways:

Read More “Sasha Grey Tyra Banks Condescension Video Corner” »

And we’ve got the whole, non-white-trashy thing on tape:

Sarah Seltzer for Reproductive Health Reality Check wonders if Levi is a “victim” in the Palin spotlight. “The Internet is buzzing over Levi Johnston’s appearance on Tyra yesterday to ‘break his silence,’ and providing us all with a reminder that patriarchal policies like abstinence-only education hurt young men, too,” writes Seltzer.

I couldn’t agree more: We’re all victims here: Levi, Bristol, Tripp, and Palin herself all suffered at the hands of her ridiculous abstinence (with a teenage pregnancy backup) method. Everyone, that is, except Tyra, who pulls a fierce Katie Couric to get the daytime interview of the post-pregnancy season.

There are no words. [Via].

Has Tyra earned an award from the LGBT community?

Later this month, Tyra Banks is set to receive a GLAAD Media Award for “Excellence in Media” for her work with the LGBT community on the Tyra Banks Show and America’s Next Top Model. Last year, Banks famously paid for ANTM contest (and D.C.-area local) Isis King’s sex reassignment surgery.

Queers United questions whether Banks is a true ally, noting that her treatment of gay issues has sometimes bordered on the offensive: “In the past few months, the Tyra show seems to be giving a lot of airtime to debating whether sexuality can be changed, and to insinuate that orientations like bisexuality are fake,” writes QU.

I’m not going to argue as to whether Banks is a “true” ally of the LGBT community. But I have to wonder: Why give Tyra an award when she’s so willing to pat herself on the back?

Read More “Tyra Banks Loves LGBT Community, Self” »

* Metro Weekly opines on 25 years of Mid-Atlantic Leather weekend.

* Tyra Banks finds the one woman who has never heard of Sarah Palin.

* Tiger Beatdown tells you who’s faring better this week—chicks or dudes—based on evidence culled from extensive personal experience crack reporting a Google alert she’s set up for “women than men”. But take heed: ” When it comes to the Dreaded Crotch Rot, no one wins.”

* Gender Goggles gives a refresher course on feminist theory.

* Melinda Hennebeger at Slate’s XX Factor calls bullshit on this whole virgin auction thing:

So does that gal attempting to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder remind anyone else of the young woman at Yale who was supposedly documenting her multiple self-induced miscarriages as a senior art project a while back? Not that I have any trouble believing that lots of people would cash that check. Yet something about the whole enterprise seems fishy to me. And I dunno about those “housewives” either; are they for real, or just hideously conforming to expectations?

Photo by trialsanderrors.

Tyra Banks is prepared to grant transgender America’s Next Top Model contestant Isis King the gift that keeps on giving: An all-expenses paid sex reassignment surgery. Banks will surprise King with the gift on her show tomorrow, US Weekly reports. King, the first transgender individual to compete on Banks’ model show, hails from Prince George’s County, Md.

Isis King, the first transgender woman to compete to be America’s Next Top Model, has been booted from the show, The Advocate reports. The 22-year-old King, “a pre-operative transgender woman,” was the fifth of 14 finalists to be eliminated this season. King’s exit came after a photo shoot that “required her to wear a bikini, which made her noticeably uncomfortable,” writes The Advocate.

King, who hails from Prince George’s County, Md., “endured mocking from some of the contestants, support from others” on the show, according to The Advocate. DCist follows up on King’s next step: On November 2, she’ll be honored at a Jazz Brunch held by GLBT group “Equality Maryland.”

Nigel Barker, British photographer and frequent judge on Tyra Banks reality television program America’s Next Top Model, will address members of Congress today on the slaughter of baby harp seals. Barker, who memorably said of one would-be Tyra, “if conceited drag queens are ‘in’, she’s got a shot at being America’s Next Top Model,” counts activist seal hunt photography among his passions. Barker recently joined the Humane Society in a visit to the Canadian ice floes to “expose the cruelties of the annual seal hunt.” Cruelties officially set to be exposed in the U.S. Capitol building today at 4 p.m.

Photo by Ed Kavishe at fashionwirepress.com