STARBANKS
I am sitting in a Starbucks right now. Itâs one of those updated pretty ones, re-designed and cute. This is the first time in my life that I have connected to the Wi-Fi, opened my computer and seriously sat at a Starbucks to WRITE. Like⊠for real. I ordered egg white bites and some orange cream matcha thing. Weird combo but surprisingly yum.
I have officially become that woman in plaid pajama pants in Starbucks writing something. Look at me. Except âDancing Queenâ is BLASTING through the speakers and getting on my damn nerves. I know. I know. âDancing Queenâ is supposed to make you feel joyful and free, like youâre in some Americans in Greece movie. But not today. Today, it is in my ears. It is in my brain. It is sitting on top of every thought I am trying to think. It is justâŠ
Too Much.
Which is pretty damn perfect considering what I am sitting here trying to write about.
Wait. Song changed. Now theyâre playing âWatermelon Sugar,â which is less aggressive on my brain, so maybe I can actually write this thing.
Okay HarryâŠ
Here we go.
EXHIBIT A: TYRA B.
I have been called Too Much for a very long time. Like⊠decades. I used to get in trouble in class because I talked too damn much while the teacher was teaching. Sometimes I see old TV footage of myself, and even I am sitting there like: Oh, Lord. Tyra.
There was the time on my talk show when I gave away tubs of Vaseline like Mizz Oprah was giving away cars. âYOU GET VASELINE! AND YOU GET VASELINE!â Yep. Too Much.
There was one of the many times I interviewed Beyoncé, where I created an entire list of questions based on words that rhymed with her name. Like, Brie-yoncé: What is your favorite cheese? Why? Why did I need to do that? Because apparently I did. Wayyyyy Too Much.
But letâs turn the table on you for a second. Who are you? Are you Too Much?
Are you the person whose perfume enters the room three minutes before your body does?
Too many holes pierced in your ears?
Is your birthday not a birthDAY at all, but a birthweek? A birthMONTH?
Did one tattoo become three, then seven, then suddenly there was no more available real estate and you were like, Hmmm⊠what about the back of my tongue?
Are your baby hairs swooped so far down toward your eyebrows that they are basically trying to become the Too Much bangs I had on episode two of season 22 of Project Runway?
Maybe the people in your life look at you, shake their heads, and say, âLordy⊠Too Much.â
Screw âem! Claim yoâ Too Much thang, baby!
You can spend your entire life trying to prove to everybody that you are not the thing they called you. That you are not Too Much. Or you can look at them and say: Yep. Now watch what I do with that.
WHAT THE HELL DO I CALL THIS THING?
Before there was âThe World of Too Much,â there was just this unnamed new Substack I wanted to start. And I already knew one thing: I did not want it to feel like a newsletter. I wanted it to vibe like anâŠ
Amusement park.
Now, I have been obsessed with amusement parks since I was a little girl. Some of that obsession started because I was the daughter of divorced parents and my daddyâactually, Iâm gonna save that for another post. See? We already have future attractions.
But I knew I wanted to capture that feeling here, one of a world with different Lands inside it. Places with their own personalities, rides and stories, creativity and coasters, foolishness and funhouses, lessons and lines, drama and drops, memories and fantasies⊠probably some things that should remain inside my brain (but very clearly will not).
There was just one problem: I couldnât land on a name.
I was in Palo Alto with my mom, Mama Carolyn. We were there for almost a month while she was going through a serious course of medical treatments. Our days revolved around appointments, meals, keeping her spirits up, keeping mine up, too, and mostly just staying close.
One morning before her treatment, we were driving out for breakfastâour little daily ritual, because my mom has to have breakfast. It is hands-down her favorite meal. Somewhere between debating CafĂ© Borrone or Mademoiselle Colette, we started tossing around names for this Substack idea I had been dreaming about.
There were a whole bunch of hell-no names flying around that car. Some probably need to stay lost inside that damn car forever.
Too Much Land. No.
The TyTy Coaster. No.
TyLandia. Girl. No.
And somewhere in all of that, Mama basically said:
âDonât put Land in it. You buildinâ a world, child.â
And I was likeâŠ
Wait.
A world.
Then I said:
âWhat about The World of Too Much?â
We looked at each other.
YEP.
That was it.
THOSE Wâs
There was another reason I knew that this had to be the name: the Wâs.
I remember Michael Eisner hosting The Disney Sunday Movie when I was a kid, carrying on this Sunday-night tradition that Walt Disney had started decades before. And years later, he brought that world back under Waltâs magical old title: The Wonderful World of Disney.
I loved those words. Wonderful. World. Disney. Those Wâs rolling into each other. It sounded like you were being invited somewhere special.
And now I could hear it.
Welcome to The World of Too Much.
(Welcome to The World of Woo Much wouldâve been perfect for the Wâs⊠but even for me, that felt a little too crazy.)
Say it out loud. No, seriously.
Not with Woo. With Too.
Welcome to The World of Too Much.
See???
Those Wâs. Gosh, I love words. Always have.
Because what you may already know is that I have made up words that escaped my brain and somehow ended up coming out of other peopleâs mouths all over the world.
What you may not know about me is that I freaking LOVE to write. I love it, love it, love it. Actually, more than I love to read.
And I LOVE me some reading.
GOODBYE, TINY-ASS CAPTIONS
Before modeling came crashing into my life, I thought I was going to write for film and television. Yep. Before Paris and runways and staring out at you from magazine covers, there was a girl who wanted to write stories for screens.
So, one of the MAIN things that excites me most about being here on Substack is I do not have to shove everything swirling around inside my big forehead into a tiny-ass social media caption.
And yes. I know. My Instagram captions were not exactly tiny. Some of yâall definitely saw one of my captions and probably went: Oh Lord, here she go with Chapter Seven.
And I know people donât always read them! Thatâs okay. Instagram is Instagram. TikTokTik is TikTok. Itâs why I archived everything⊠I wanted a reset. A big, blank, EMPTY page.
And here? Here, Iâm gonna WRITE-write. And youâre gonna READ-read. Essays. Stories. Memories. Lessons. Things I am still working out while you are reading them.
Weâll talk about fashion, beauty, business, food, creativity, failure, REINVENTION, dreams, all through the TyTy lens. There will be things here Iâve never talked about publicly. Stuff that scares me, ideas that sound ridiculous but somehow become real and⊠are, quite frankly, still ridiculous.
Sometimes Iâll teach. Sometimes Iâll make you laugh. Sometimes I may piss you off. Sometimes I will probably embarrass myself.
Sometimes Iâll tell you something and my mama will call me afterward like, âTyra. Why the hell did you tell them people that?â
And we will move through it one Land at a time. I am not opening every damn Land on day one. Youâll just have to come back.
This feels like the start of something new, but also, a return to something Iâve missed about myself.
OH SHOOT, WEâRE REALLY DOING THIS
Weâre gonna be chilling here together, and whenever you need your Too Much fix, come get it. Iâve got so much for you, baby!
Maybe youâre already at the gates waiting for your Too Much Churro and Full-On Funnel Cake.
Or maybe youâre standing outside this World with your arms folded, lips pursed, eyes rolling, looking at all of us like: This girl⊠Lord, Tyra. You are doing entirely too damn much.
Come closer.
Right now, this World is still new. The pathways are still fresh. The Lands havenât been built and the gates havenât fully opened because, hell, I donât know whatâs behind some of them yet.
But someday, if this world becomes as big and as weird and as beautiful as I dream, you get to say something that nobody who arrives later can, which is:
I was there when Tyra unlocked those crazy gates.
You donât have to ride anything yet. Just peek inside. Watch. Read. Laugh with me. Laugh at me. Maybe one day youâll look down and realize you somehow ended up on this wild ride, too.
But hereâs what I want you to remember: this is the beginning.
Put on your Too Much Shades. Grab my hand if you need to. Or donât. Maybe you hate holding hands. Mine are rough and super dry anyways.
Either wayâŠ
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOO MUCH.
P.S. Iâm still sitting in this Starbucks, sucking the orange cream out of the porous ice cubes from my matcha and spitting the sucked-dry ice into my empty egg-white-bites tray because I refuse to put those sad, flavorless little cubes back into my cup.
And I have just realized two things:
I have been here way too long.
And wowâŠ
I just wrote my first Substack!
I LOVE this. Watch you for years!! Im also just starting my substack and you inspire me so much to keep on.
Iâve been writing since I could write and watched your show all throughout high school, from the moment that one of my classmates got plucked from school and into the runway world for Tommy Hilfiger, if I remember correctly. My inner child is a genius and I could not have anticipated meeting you like this. Itâs perfect and thank you for spending the time expressing yourself and taking the time to show me how as a teenâIâm looking forward to your movies. Thank you for being unafraid of range, itâs a pleasure living alongside you on this planet.