Supermodel-turned-reality-show-host-turned-talk-show-queen Tyra Banks spoke with People magazine about the weight she’s put on since she retired from modeling in 2005. When a tabloid posted these pics of Tyra looking a little hefty in a swimsuit with some disparaging headlines, Tyra’s feelings were understandably hurt. “I get so much mail from young girls who say, ‘I look up to you, you’re not as skinny as everyone else, I think you’re beautiful,’ ” she says. “So when they say that my body is ‘ugly’ and ‘disgusting,’ what does that make those girls feel like?”

Continues Tyra, “I’ve made millions of dollars with the body I have, so where’s the pain in that? If I was in pain, I would have dieted. The pain is not there – the pain is someone printing a picture of me and saying those (horrible) things.”

Tyra’s long been a proponent of a realistic body image for young women, and she always encourages the girls on Top Model to eat healthy and take care of themselves. The competition used to regularly include a token “fat model,” but producers must have realized the hopelessness of that cause, because the more recent cycles have been all thin girls. Last year, Tyra announced that she would no longer allow photo shoots of herself to be digitally retouched before being used in magazine, again emphasizing that this sends a message promoting unrealistic beauty to women. Because, you know, every woman can look like Tyra Banks if she just exercises and eats right.

But is there an additional motive to Tyra’s weight gain? “(TV execs) think it’s better when I’m at 155 lbs. – at 145, they feel I’m not as relatable,” she says. Perhaps Tyra’s trying to discard her supermodel image and adopt a look that Midwestern housewives will be more comfortable taking advice from.

At what point did People magazine get the monopoly on celebrity coming-out stories? Anyway, meet McGay. [Pop on the Pop]

Prince Harry’s new girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, wonders aloud if woolly mammoths are extinct. Their season of Newlyweds is going to rock so hard. [CelebSlam]

The photo shoot theme for this week’s ANTM was “celebrity couples.” Demonstrating the level of taste and subtelty we have come to associate so inextricably with the weekly, hour-long pitch for Tyra Banks’ surely forthcoming magazine, the girl who came out as a lesbian the day before was asked to be — I’m serious — Ellen and Portia di Rossi. [MollyGood]

Nicole Richie prefers to spend her time in restaurants getting laid in the bathroom, mostly because it’s the farthest she can get from the food. [Cele|Bitchy]

Nicky Hilton kicks off publicity for her fashion-centric Miami hotel, Nicky O, with — what else? — full frontal male nudity. There is a joke here to illustrate that nudity has very little to do with fashion, but I am too distracted by penises to think of it. [The Superficial]

Sofia Coppola is expecting a baby girl in December. With any luck, she won’t cast the kid in Lost in Translation 3. [Celebrity Baby Blog]

Paris Hilton avoids the premiere of her new movie, National Lampoon’s Pledge This, because she doesn’t want to be associated with a film that will likely go straight to video. She really could have made that decision much earlier, like when they cast Simon Rex and Randy Spelling. [Hollywood Gossip Whores]

• Do you want to see more pictures of little Sean Preston Spears waving from the window of his mommy’s hospital room? Okay.
• Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson accidentally schedule their Maui vacations for the same week. That is so weird.
• Tyra Banks blasts the ‘razzi, but not until after she’s tipped them off as to where she and Nicole Richie will be doing it.
• Remember how Howard K. Stern’s first statement about the death of Anna Nicole Smith’s son Daniel emphasized that drugs and alcohol were not involved? To the surprise of no one, that is looking less and less true; the more I hear about the situation, the more awful it sounds.