S03E43 PAULINA PORIZKOVA - SUPERMODEL BUT SUPER ROLE MODEL?

Paulina Porizkova @paulinaporizkov supermodel is now 58 years old. And she's posted a lot about aging and self-worth. Should we be emulating her? Maybe. Maybe not.

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website for her YouTube Video: After a Lifetime of Being Looked At, Supermodel Paulina Porizkova Wants You to Listen - YouTube

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S03E43 PAULINA PORIZKOVA - SUPERMODEL BUT SUPER ROLE MODEL?

I would write something about being, you know, 52 or 53 and looking like this, and people would comment with, well, big f*cking deal. JLo is a lot better looking than you, and she's only like two years younger. When I thought about it, all the actresses and singers and the personalities around my age all looked better than me, and they all looked younger than me because they've had some work done.

So I went on the internet. And I went, okay, I want to see pictures of a real 55 year old. There was nobody there. It was a big empty hole. It wasn't until you got to Betty White where old people got to be cool again. Between JLo and Betty White is me. You're kind of falling into the hole of being invisible between those two women, and I'm not okay with that.

[00:00:51] Sam Rhee: What we just saw is a clip of a video of Paulina Porizkova, known as a supermodel. She's currently 58 years old, and she's a Czech born model and writer. In 1984, she became the first central European woman to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

If you want to watch the whole 18 minute video, the YouTube link will be at the botoxandburpees.com website. It's titled, "After a lifetime of being looked at, supermodel Paulina Porizkova wants you to listen." It appears to be a hybrid performance piece and interview where she methodically undresses down to her lingerie while discussing her life.

The video description states, "Rocketing to the top of the world as a supermodel in the eighties and nineties. Paulina Porizkova was always prized for her beauty. However, years of being looked at but not listened to, took their toll whittling away at her self-worth."

The description goes on to say, "She saw her past for what it was, a lifetime of being objectified. Paulina has broken free discovering that the loss of her childbearing body has allowed her to find the most interesting version of herself. Stronger, more beautiful, smarter, more patient, wiser and funnier."

"And this is where you don't want to see me anymore because I've aged out of being physically appealing to you. Maybe if I shout loud enough f*ck you, that is not so, somebody will take notice."

When I first saw this video a couple weeks ago, it made me think, and I couldn't really put my reaction into words at the time. I put it away in my brain mentally. And then this past week in class, I was talking to another athlete who's also a woman in her fifties, and she was lamenting the fact that she was no longer as good looking as she was, and that aging was a terrible thing.

And that finally gave me the spark to say the three things that I wanted to say about Paulina Porizkova, at least for this episode.

Paulina was an extremely famous model when I was growing up. She appeared on many magazine covers, advertising campaigns, and made millions of dollars simply by being, as she put it, a one dimensional creature.

While I can't imagine that that was an easy life, it was certainly a lucrative one. In 1988 at the age of 23, Paulina Porizkova won what was then the highest paying modeling contract ever. A 6 million dollar contract with Estee Lauder, and then in a pairing of superstars, Paulina married Rick Ocasek, lead singer of the rock band The Cars after meeting him during the filming of the car's music video, Drive.

Of course models are famous simply because people consider them beautiful. Christie Brinkley, Cindy Crawford, Kathy Ireland, Claudia Schiffer. These were our generation's examples of beauty. And certainly that means these supermodels were often treated more like objects and not like people.

Paulina talks about her younger life as a model. She's quoted as saying, "being a model, you rent out your body as a blank canvas, and then you get poked and prodded and pushed around and shoved. We are one dimensional creatures." And yet there are many high profile careers where people who are larger than life are no longer considered people but objects.

These are people who are not valued for themselves, but for whatever skills or physical characteristics are prized. Now, I don't follow the lives of many, or any supermodels, but I do follow a lot of professional athletes. I consider the lives of supermodels and pro athletes to be remarkably similar in many ways.

Shohei Otani and Aaron Judge are not valued as people, but simply for their skills. Once they can no longer pitch well or hit home runs, they will no longer be valued by people the way they are now. And the same goes for supermodels. Yet, if you look at this type of individual, those whose skill sets are valued for a short period of time of their lives, whether they're superstar athletes or supermodels, I believe that they do not believe that their self-worth is solely based on the fact that people will watch them hit a 100 mile per hour fastball.

Or dunk a basketball or that people think that they're extremely attractive. Because those things don't last. I believe life fulfillment and long-term self-worth can never be dependent on the opinions of others. It can't be based on things that are temporary and fleeting in your life. Once you realize you will not have these skills or desirability forever, you will need to find other skills, other joys, other means of validating your self-worth.

Once you hang up your bikini or Versace gown or your cleats and baseball bat, what is it that will help you find joy and raise your self-esteem? It doesn't appear that Paulina really thought about this until her career was over. She said around the age of 45, Paulina started to notice that people were treating her differently.

"I was sort of getting relinquished to the invisible woman category. It dawned on me that when you walk down the street when you're a younger woman, it's like every man passes you and goes, is she f*ckable?

Now in your fifties, you can most definitely walk down the street without having anybody bounce anything off of you. Like people will literally just walk into you and you think, hold on a second. I am actually a far more interesting person than I've ever been. This is where you don't want to see me anymore because I've aged out of being physically appealing to you.

Why did it take her this long to realize that her self-worth should not have been wrapped up in her looks, or whether men think she's f*ckable, but who she was as a real person? Why was she validating herself so long by what others thought of her?

Athletes are counseled to have exit strategies for their post-professional careers for the rest of their lives. It's unfortunate that it did not seem to be the same for Paulina. It's a question that we should ask ourselves. What defines us? Is it our job? What gives us our self-worth?

How are we redefining ourselves over time? Are we only thinking of ourselves as ex supermodels or ex-pro athletes? Or have we found something that goes beyond the boxes that people put us in? Are we to aspire to try to be the same people we were when we were 18, 25 or 35? Why is the athlete at my gym lamenting she doesn't look the way she did when she was younger?

I think she should be celebrating the fact that she's now at a gym working on her fitness to be the best 50 year old version of herself. Can't we take inspiration from those famous ones who figured out something else that they love to do after their first career was over? Maybe we can create a cooking appliance after boxing like George Foreman, or become a politician after being a New York Knick, like Bill Bradley. Or become a talk show host after playing in the NFL like Michael Strahan. Those are the famous ones.

How about the people out there who are living fulfilled lives after their first career is gone that we don't hear about anymore? Like Carrie Strug, one of the most recognizable gymnasts in American history, best known for a 1996 Olympic appearance where she vaulted on her injured ankle in order to secure gold for the United States.

She now works for the US Department of Justice's office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Or Randy Johnson, one of the best left-handed pitchers in Major League baseball history. At the age of 40, he was the oldest to throw a perfect game.

He's now a professional photographer. We do not have to let what others think define our self-worth. We should think about our future. We should think about what drives us. What motivates us.

We are not who we are right now. Knowing that is where our true value lies.

My second point about Paulina is, so what else can you do in regards to your self-worth to ensure that your life has value, even if you can no longer grace magazine covers? Well, regardless of your looks or skills or aspects for which people may objectively value, I think one of the most important things that help us stay truly us, are our connections with friends, with family, people who value us intrinsically, no matter how famous or celebrated we may be.

And for Paulina, it is clear she suffered in this regard. Her former husband, Rick Ocasek died in 2019 from natural causes. At the time, Paulina and Rick had separated a year earlier and were in the process of their divorce. She talks about her divorce from Rick Ocasek saying, "We had been together for my entire life since I was 19, and suddenly he seemed to not find me attractive anymore.

I started feeling like I was a coffee table. Something you put shit on and bump into the middle of the night, but pay no more attention to other than that." Paulina admits that Ocasek never really listened to her, but he had always seen her and wanted her, which was enough to sustain her through the years.

But then she grew up. "I realized I wanted my partner, my husband, to listen to me so that he could see me, so that he could see that I'm no longer just the hot model he had married," she said. "There were other things about me. I thought that were valuable. Pretty much everything but my looks. I had thought that I was boring for 30 years because my husband made me feel boring because whenever I would speak, he would just yawn and look around and completely dismiss me. I sort of went with that for a while until I could no longer take it."

I feel sorry that Rick Ocasek died before he and Paulina had a chance to work out their relationship issues. Clearly, it seems that there were some major problems that never got solved in their marriage, like many marriages, and that may be a lesson for all of us in our relationships.

Who values us for us, not for what we can do or how we present, or what people think of us, but who cares about us once all of that is stripped away? That is a difficult question and one that it appears Paulina did not understand the answer to until it was too late and it still continues to haunt her to this day.

One of the things that I love about coaching at my CrossFit gym is that I often don't know what people do outside of it. I don't know what they do, how rich they are, how accomplished they are. I only care about their performance, their health, and how I can help them.

Watching someone do a CrossFit workout, you can learn more about someone's true self than sometimes years of sitting next to them at a job. And those are the personal connections at the gym that can be more meaningful than anything else outside of it.

I would say the 50 year old athlete at my gym is actually doing better now since she started to work on herself and see what her physical capabilities are now, better than she had been for decades when she was doing nothing. And she may find new friends and connections that may truly sustain her if she lets it, that she may value more than ever in her life, because these people value her for who she truly is intrinsically,

The last reaction I have to Paulina's video is why is she so centered on self? She says she's the only one between J Lo and Betty White. She says there's a big hole between those two famous women and she's the only one. But is she? A quick look at celebrities seem to show a lot of women who are powering on in their fifties and beyond.

Jennifer Aniston is 53. Viola Davis is 56. Selma Hayek is 55. Michelle Yeoh is 60. Jamie Lee Curtis is 63. Meryl Streep is 73 years old. Helen Mirren is 76 years old. I think there are a lot of people in that big hole that Paulina is claiming that she's the only one filling. Now, I don't know if any of these celebrities have had any cosmetic surgery or aesthetic treatments, but I think Paulina is a little disingenuous when she says she's the only one who hasn't had work done.

She often uses the hashtags #nobotox, #nofillers, #nointerventions, #nosurgery, and that's something I wanna discuss in my next episode of my podcast.

She says, "I do not wanna fight myself every day for the rest of my life, but I do want to make the best of what I was given. And I want to shine a bright light in the dark corners of the shame that is heaped on women for daring to age." While these sentiments are laudable, it is unfortunate that she only started thinking about this shame once she began experiencing others not finding her desirable anymore.

Did she ever think about this when she was younger and in her prime about others aging gracefully ahead of her? Did she ever have mentors or people who inspired her to navigate aging well? Why is she so disdainful about what others choose to do when they find themselves getting old? And why is she not raising up the Betty Whites of the world and anticipating how she will look when she's 60, 70, or 80 years old?

Is it only then that she will champion the geriatric generation when she finally gets there? Is that finally when that look becomes attractive and desirable?

Unfortunately, and Paulina admits this, a lot of what she says and shows is a need for self-validation, and that is common to all of us. But rather than continuing to worry about what others think and using her platform to glorify herself in her quest to quote change the world, using her platform to raise up others and not merely validate that she is still sexy and beautiful would be more inspiring to me.

Celebrating who you are now is fantastic. We can all celebrate others who are in the same boat as well. It doesn't have to be a million selfies on Instagram, telling others how awesome we are at 50. I really hope Paulina will find that she is too busy living a fantastic life to take the time to post bikini shots and then read the comments and then hit back at the haters.

One of the great things about being human is that I think we are our best when we are in service to others. It may only be to your spouse or to your family, or your local community. Could be your country or your world or greater purpose, but we are our greatest and we have our greatest self-worth when we can stop thinking so much about ourselves and instead about how great we are when we raise others.

How do you feel about your self worth? Is it bound up in your job, your responsibilities, your titles? How do you feel about getting older? What connections do you value in your life? Who do you try to raise up around you? Let me know and DM me @BotoxAndBurpeesPodcast on Instagram. Thank you.