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Tyra Banks at 45 Covers Sports Illustrated Swim Issue summer 2019.
Credit: Laretta Houston/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.
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Summer 2019 Sports Illustrated Cover:
Swimsuit: 2019 Issue: Portrait of Tyra Banks posing during photo shoot.
Great Exuma, Bahamas 2/19/2019
CREDIT: Laretta Houston
- She’s 45 years old and looks AMAZING.
Banks was the first African-American woman to appear solo on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swim Issue in 1997 and was on the cover twice. Her coming out of retirement for the 2019 cover truly holds a full circle meaning. She was also the first Black woman to be on the cover of GQ.
The model donned a barely there string bikini and was shot by Laretta Houston in the Bahamas. Banks quit modeling to focus on her multitude of businesses, including America’s Next Top Model where she has created model stars like Winnie Harlow and Eva Marcille.
Tyra was photographed in Great Exuma, Bahamas, by Laretta Houston wearing a tiny yellow string bikini in her comeback cover. And she made an appearance on Good Morning America on Wednesday morning, telling the hosts “My first one was 23 years ago, how crazy is that…I’m like damn—I’m 45 dog!”
She also said that she’s 25 pounds heavier than she was in the 1997 shoot.
“We couldn’t find the exact one in the archives—it was the polka dot bikini so we recreated that bikini,” she said. “I recreated it [the shoot]—25 pounds heavier.”
There’s no question that Tyra looks amazing—but she works hard to stay fit all year long. Here’s how she does it.