2005 Victoria's Secret: "My retirement! I ate differently before then, but I really can't do the dieting. Even backstage at fashion shows, there would be food. Some models would eat it, some wouldn't – I would always grub on it!" Photo by: ANDREA RENAULT / GLOBE
Tyra Talks Back| Tyra Banks
But she doesn't – not then, not now, which helps explain why she isn't freaking out about having to wear size 32-waist jeans or about "the fat roll" she claims to have on her back. (Her biggest source of figure angst is her size-DD breasts, which she says make it hard to find clothes that fit: "I would love for them to be a size and a half smaller.") In fact, with the astonishing frankness that has helped make The Tyra Banks Show a hit – and landed her on TIME and Forbes magazines' lists of the most influential celebrities – Banks has resigned herself to putting on "about 5 lbs. a year," she says, a pace that would have her nearing the 200-lb. mark by age 40. Even that prospect doesn't seem to shake her. "I won't be rejoicing and joyful, thinking I'm the most hot thing in the world," she says. "But is it going to kill me and be the end of the world? No."

If Banks seems unusually accepting of her body – especially for a woman who made a living in an industry known for prizing thinness above all – it's in part because she has been dealing with weight issues all her life. Growing up in Inglewood, Calif., Banks shot up to 5'10" tall and only 110 lbs. during her adolescence, prompting schoolmates to tease her by calling her "Ethiopian." Even today, Banks says that the "lowest point of my life" was when, as a young teen, a friend came over asking for her, and her mother, Carolyn London, replied, "Oh, her skinny butt is in her bedroom." Recalls London, 58: "She heard that and broke down. I had no idea she felt so insecure about her physical appearance."

Those insecurities would continue – albeit in a different form – during her modeling career. At age 18, Banks headed to Paris and landed one high-fashion show after another. (Interestingly enough, with a body mass index, or BMI, of only 16.2 at the time, the Tyra Banks of 1992 wouldn't be eligible to model today in Madrid, where the fashion industry ruled last fall that its runway models must have a BMI of 18 or higher.) Back then, "I was naturally thin and never had to worry," says Banks, who, at age 20, signed with CoverGirl, becoming one of only a handful of African-American women to land a coveted cosmetics contract.