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 and 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 girlboss-y 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.
I want you to think about the phrase "hot ice cream" for a second, because you will think you know what it is. And then Banks and the Smize & Dream team will do everything they can to dissuade you of your certainty. "I'm not talking about a latte, I'm not talking about hot chocolate that has flavors," says Banks. The product is so new, it's not listed on the company's website yet, so there's no clue there. And in the comments of her introductory video, her team shoots down every plausible guess. "So …custard?" posits one, to which the official account lobs "So … naw." Another asks if it's like a warm milkshake? "Not quite." Melted ice cream as a drink? "It's a drink. But it's not melted." Or perhaps just a warm cup of milk. "If only it were that simple," they taunt. I cannot even tell what we are left with here. At a certain point, it seems like a liability to refuse to tell customers what is in the cup.
Here's a video for the flavor Fairy Dough Diva, which again, is not just eggnog and sprinkles. "I made it hot," she says, "as in hot cream, hot ice cream." She keeps saying it, like its definition is self-evident. It seems almost a blessing that she describes the hot ice cream as "liquid, warm, soothing, yummy, silky,"—OK, so we know it's a liquid!—but those are all words you could use to describe tomato soup, so we're not making much progress.
In another, she gestures to "Tyra's Favorite," an ice-cream flavor featuring toasted pecans and caramel. "I have been working on making it hot for a year," she says. I have spent days thinking about that year. A year. To do what? How could hot ice cream be in any meaningful, legal way distinct from a warm milkshake? A year to make ice-cream soup like a child chef. And the gastrointestinal distress of it all! Served in a lidded paper cup like you're a businesswoman on the go, sipping hot sugared cream as you run from errand to errand, inevitably farting over all your paperwork.
I'm sure the hot ice cream tastes fine because it's hard to fuck up milk and sugar. On some level, Banks is tapping into society's insatiable appetite for elaborate drinks that evoke but move ever further away from coffee, especially if they are served in the wrong season. Keep in mind it's becoming summer in Australia's hemisphere, presumably not exactly when you'd crave a steaming paper cup of creme anglaise, but we have people here who make their whole personality drinking iced coffee in a blizzard, so anything is possible. And Smize & Dream is teasing that it's bringing hot ice cream to New York this winter, where at least it could be a cozying beverage. Yet that feels like a threat. We already have frozen hot chocolate at tourist trap Serendipity 3, we don't need hot ice cream to confront it and for the paradox to tear a hole in reality.
But it's the crazed look in her eyes, the frantic assurance that this is the most genius innovation since the pumpkin spice latte, that has lured so many into what would otherwise be a not particularly interesting stunt food. I came upon the video in my Instagram feed, already being stitched by people frantically asking TYRA WHAT ARE YOU DOING. I think she knows what she's doing. On the surface, starting an ice cream company is the most predictable thing a 51-year-old model and actress could do. Food content is where middle-aged famous women go to remain in the spotlight when Hollywood has deemed them undesirable, but when they're still too young to return as a dignified, beloved grandma. Is there anything about Kristin Cavallari that makes you think she's so adept in the kitchen that you'd want to buy her cookbook? Do you really think Paris Hilton knows enough about cooking to merit a whole show? No. This is about maintaining a brand, keeping your face in a spotlight, even if it's one you're perhaps uniquely unqualified for.
Plus, Banks is just doing what she does best—committing to the bit, selling you so hard on something you have no choice but to bend. When she was a model, it worked because you wanted to see an objectively gorgeous woman in impractical lingerie. On ANTM, she was a mad king, alternately flashing empathy and brilliance and making girls shave their heads so much they cried, and convincing the viewer this was completely normal. And The Tyra Banks Show proved she was willing to do just about anything for a reaction, any reaction. Remember when she pretended to have rabies and started barking? Remember when she asked Beyoncé if she could do a Russian accent? Hell, we are all saying "smize" like it's an actual word. Perhaps if we had stopped her then we wouldn't have hot ice cream, which I'm shocked she didn’t name something like "Ice Crot."
Banks knows we love watching a beautiful woman make an absolute fool of herself with the utmost confidence. You can see it in the way she lets the whipped cream smear over her face while sipping her Fairy Dough Diva SMiZE&DREAM HOT MAMA Hot Ice Cream. Has she lost her mind, or is she just pretending to lose her mind?
It's a meaningless distinction. American culture has been driven by the online, the nihilistic, and the trollish for a while, something Patrick Cosmos called "everyone is twelve now." It's a position that requires no critical thinking, just reacting and posting. Selling ice-cream soup is 12-year-old behavior, as is smirking when you tell everyone it's not just melted ice cream. "What even is Hot Mama? A dessert? A hot milkshake? Tyra's cray-cray in a couture cup?," asks Smize & Dream in their latest video, "Who the hell knows?" YOU DO. YOU KNOW.
But they'll never say. The confusion is the product. And "I have been working on making it hot for a year" is a troll calibrated to elicit precisely my grade of infuriation. Either she spent a year of restless nights conducting experiments on how to heat cream once it's already been iced (NOT hot chocolate, NOT warm milk), or she is lying to us about what we can see with our own eyes. The draw is not knowing how much is real, because it doesn't matter. We get hot ice cream either way. Hot cream. Hot ice cream.
