Tyra Banks Talks About Being Rejected As A Black Model

Tyra Banks was the first African American woman to grace the cover of Sport Illustrated and GQ, but her success didn't come without a lot of rejection.

The 41-year-old America's Next Top Model host opened up to Glamour magazine about her struggles being a black model in the industry when she first started out and claimed she was rejected by six agencies before she got her big break.

"Oh, so many," Tyra said when asked what doors were locked to her when she was an aspiring model.

"There was a door that was locked because I was a young black model and the first six agencies I knocked at said no—I think four of the six said, "We already have a black girl."

"And then once I was successful, designers were like, "You're getting too thick," and I figured a way to restrategize my career around that and said, "OK, who likes curves? Victoria's Secret, Sports Illustrated."

The outspoken businesswoman said people also put limitations on other aspirations of hers, pigeonholing her as a model who couldn't produce TV shows.

"When I wanted to be a television producer, I had a lot of people tell me, "Oh, you're a model; you could never do that. You walk runways in your underwear," she said.

Tyra went on to win two Emmys for America's Next Top Model, host her own TV show and graduate from a program at Harvard Business School in 2012.

"I want to be a really strong leader," she said of enrolling in the university.

"I look at Walt Disney, Oprah, Richard Branson, and how they lead a team, how they inspire a team, because you can't do it by yourself."

Tyra is back on our TV screens with her new talks show FABLife and is set to release her own cosmetics line.