Tyra Banks’s eyes are wild. Or maybe they were just always that way, her piercing green-gray irises one of many reminders that right, before she was a TV host, an MLM kingpin, and a meme, she was a supermodel. They’re darting, they’re blinking way too much, they’re smizing without any effort. They are almost distracting enough to keep you from focusing on what’s coming out of her mouth, which is gibberish. “It’s like I don’t sleep, these ideas keep coming into my head,” she says as she twirls her fingers at her temples, making the international sign for crazy lady. “And then this one came to me: hot ice cream.”
Banks started her girlbossy ice cream company Smize & Dream in 2020, the kind of place that is dedicated to the concept of “mamas” and employs a “Director of Smize theatrics” to hire ice-cream scoopers who are camera-friendly. She launched the hot ice cream in September at the company’s first and only permanent shop in Sydney, Australia. And for the past three weeks, she has been putting out videos hyping up her new “innovation,” which is technically stylized “SMiZE&DREAM HOT MAMA Hot Ice Cream.” I have been completely riveted, the way I am when I look at one of those photos designed to mimic the experience of having a stroke. I can see the hot ice cream, but I have a suspicion I am being lied to.
