Christy Turlington is one of the original supermodels – and at 44 she looks as good as she ever has, so it’s no surprise that Calvin Klein wanted her to model their underwear range.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar in the January issue, Turlington reveals that she didn’t say yes right away. "At first, I thought, 'Underwear? I don't really want to do that at this point in time,'" she says. "But then I thought that it's actually good for people to see images of women, not just young girls –- proper women who have diverse lives and demands."
Unlike many models who go a little off the rails once they’re in the industry, it actually had the opposite effect on Turlington. “I was starting to get into some trouble and was hanging out with some rebellious friends,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar. “I was sneaking cigarettes. I was this juxtaposition of a girl and a rebel teen. I had lost confidence at school so in a weird way the career gave me structure. I had to learn to be responsible and to catch my flights. There weren’t even cell phones in those days.”
Turlington doesn’t just model these days. Not only is she a mother to two children, but she also runs a charity promoting maternal health, named Every Mother Counts. Turlington had a bad experience in labour and wanted to help others. “I wasn’t at risk at all,” she says. “I had a great pregnancy and was perfectly healthy. Even the delivery was exactly as I wanted it to be. But an hour after the delivery, I didn’t go into the fourth stage of labour – my placenta was retained. It was very, very painful: delivering a baby with no medication feels like nothing compared to having your placenta torn out of your uterus.”
Read the full interview in the January issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
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Posted by Claire Sharp.
