Paulina Porizkova said that from living with a difficult mother in her childhood to her modeling days in her youth, she felt trained to do as she was told — even when it meant taking off her top.
“When I started modeling at 15, it was the same story again,” the former supermodel said after talking about feeling she had to put on a show to please her single mother, who paid little attention to her throughout her childhood.
He said, “The quickest way out of a situation is to do what you’re told.” “Twenty Good Summers” Podcast with her fiancé Jeff Greenstein.
“And if that meant taking off my top and if that meant doing X, Y and Z, I just did it because it was the easiest way to get through it and make people happy.”
Porizkova explained that “being loved for who you are” is something she did not find until she was 58.
She said that as a child her parents “didn’t really like me unless I performed,” recalling when she was watching a community theater show when she was about 3 years old and her father inspired her to get on stage.
The 60-year-old said, “I remember the lights were so incredibly bright that I couldn’t see my parents, and I couldn’t see anything beyond the stage. And I was terrified.” “I was so scared. And I thought, Well, the fastest way to get this over with is to sing a song. If I sing a song, they’ll chase me back.”
He said that the audience liked him and he got a taste of recognition.
“My parents liked me more when I could do things like this,” she admitted. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t pay close attention to me.”
She said she quickly learned that “nobody really cares what I want or how I feel. It’s all about pretending. That’s the only way people will like you,” adding that she felt she always had to be on her “best behavior.”
Like most people, she said she spent her 20s figuring out who she was and “how to make people happy.” And “So the beauty of getting older is that you discover who you are, what you are good at and what you are bad at.
“And then us women after 50 who start to become invisible anyway, we go, OK, you know what? F— other people’s perceptions and expectations. I’m just going to be who I am. Like, I’m just going to really try to be the person I’ve always known I was.”
earlier this year, Porizkova described in detail the sexual harassment she faced Entered the fashion industry at the age of just 15.
She said in a social media post, “Sometimes the people I was looking at were well-dressed and in offices, and sometimes they were middle-aged guys in dirty apartments who just wanted to take some casual photos of me – you know, preferably topless.”
“I’ve lost track of the number of people in revealing robes who welcomed me into their hotel rooms or apartments where I was sent by some agency or clients.”
Porizkova, who made history as the first Central European woman to land a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover in 1984, said progress wasn’t limited to dirty apartments.
She remembered well-dressed older men who would often invite her to parties, yachts, and tropical villas.
For years, the supermodel believed that these meetings were simply part of the pay.
“I took it all for granted,” Porizkova admitted, “My job was to take off my clothes, put my clothes back on and then learn how to constructively deal with sexist men so you don’t offend them and lose your job.”
