Tyra Banks’ Strange Sci-Fi Vision of the Future of Beauty

Women pop pills to temporarily gain Angelina Jolie-like cheekbones; being fat indicates wealth; and women—who will be able to have babies at the age of 120—will rule the world. Sound like a bad sci-fi movie? Welcome to the cosmetically-enhanced future, according to Tyra Banks.

On Monday the Wall Street Journal asked several celebs to write about the future of various industries: Mark Zuckerberg opined on what a world where everyone has access to the Internet will look like, and Taylor Swift wrote about the changing music landscape in which an artist’s connection with the audience is prioritized over the establishment. These celebs stuck to realistic predictions about the near-future. But that’s boring. Model-turned-reality show host Banks decided that the future of beauty looks a lot more like Panem in The Hunger Games.

Let’s set aside the fact that we are nowhere close to achieving the technology Banks is talking about: a serum that increases length and thickness of hair in 24 hours; the ability to conceive and bear children at the age of 120; ingestible pills that temporarily change your bone structure—pretty sure that will never be possible. Her vision of personal robots run by advertising firms, the struggle for uniqueness in a gentrified world and class warfare come directly from bad dystopian novels.

Banks, however, ends on an optimistic note for women: she says that having ultimate control over when they will have children will allow women to run the world: “Women’s empowerment will be an irrelevant concept because the balance of power between the sexes will have shifted dramatically. Women, in control of when they can have children (up to age 120!), and having more degrees and education than men, will be in charge. Men will be responsible for 70% of cosmetics sales and plastic-surgery procedures world-wide. Why? Men will be vying for women’s attention, obsessed with being attractive to females and snagging well-off ladies who can take care of them.” I’m not sure it’s as easy as that: first we have to ensure that women around the world can receive an education and any access to birth control. But I don’t want to crush Banks’ dreams.