Team Top Model Hits Back At Critics

Tyra Banks' latest righteous cause has been helping shorter women onto the runway.

"The majority of the fashion industry is about tall girls," she said at the the 20th annual GLAAD media awards in New York, "but the majority of the fashion industry is not about black women -- so with America's Next Top Model, I opened it for race, and now I'm opening it for height too."

But since announcing that she was throwing the doors of her reality contest open to women under 5' 7" -- the show has come in for a little stick from the fashion world.

In fact, the fashion establishment's bible, Vogue, reported recently that the move had been met with "derision from the American fashion community."

Well, that's the American fashion community's problem, says ANTM host, Jay Manuel.

"The fashion industry is quite fascinating to me," he told OK! at the same event.

"Typically people will look at a model on the runway and say she has to have a certain physicality, that makes her a potential top model.

"But this is also the same industry that decided to take short Kate Moss and make her a superstar.

"And in typical Tyra fashion, she finds a way to re-draw that focus to what the industry is actually doing: what they say they're not doing, but what they actually are.

"I think it's amazing that she does that."
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