A new, "fierce" guilty pleasure

Once a month, tivogirl's day job lets me telecommute while working a late night shift. What that means to you, dear reader, is tivogirl has lots of time to catch up on (mostly horrid) daytime television!

Between the trainwreck talk shows, court shows, decorating shows, crafting and cooking shows, there just isn't much that rises to the top. Ellen is great, and Oprah is good when she's not preaching. Dr. Phil is fun, but repetitive. Typically I end up catching up on Tivo'd shows or watching HGTV or the Travel Channel all day long. This week the new syndicated talk shows debuted, which normally I would just ignore, but a post over on Jolie in NYC convinced me to check out the new Tyra Banks show.

Tyra, she of Victoria's Secret and runway fame, is older (if you consider 31 "older"), wiser, chunkier and prettier than she's ever been. She's also a gigantic nutcase and a whole lot of fun to watch. Her show bounces around from topic to topic, but it's not as frenetic as it sounds. Her Fierce Force segments have been great so far -- she sends a team of stylists out to a "real world" location to give folks tips. Day one they hit the DMV and helped the folks in line come out with a decent driver's license photo. What a great idea!

She deals with body issues a lot, which is nice to see a former supermodel even acknowledge, let alone do something about. She has women and teens openly discuss their perceptions, then completely drops any pretense of ego and lifts her shirt to expose her belly flab. She did a segment on day one showing before and after modeling photos and explaining how they don't just touch up blemishes but completely erase half of "the booty."

It's only been three days, but so far Tyra's doing a great job. I'm not completely hooked yet, but if she can keep up this pace and not manage to run out of ideas in week three, she could be around for a while.

Posted by tivogirl at 4:02 PM