Cindy Crawford reflected on her changing thoughts on an old Oprah interview from when she had just started modeling.
In the 1986 interview, Oprah asked a 20-year-old Cindy, “What’s it like for you now?” Oprah then turns to John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, to ask how Cindy was discovered. “Did you have to groom her? Or did she always have this body?” Oprah asked in the interview, which appears to have been deleted from YouTube but is still live on Oprah’s website.
“This is unbelievable. Stand up just a moment, because no one saw you coming in. Now this is what I call body,” Oprah continued, getting Cindy to stand up.
Oprah then turns the interview back to John, who denied that Cindy had to change her body. Cindy herself later says in the interview that she had been studying engineering at Northwestern University and hadn’t had any long-term dreams of being a model, but put her studies on hold to pursue it.
“I was like the chattel or a child, be seen and not heard,” Cindy said in the new Apple TV+ series, The Super Models.
“When you look at it through today’s eyes, Oprah’s like, ‘Stand up and show me your body. Show us why you’re worthy of being here,'” Cindy continued.
Cindy said that her thoughts on the segment had changed in the years that followed. “In the moment I didn’t recognize it, and watching it back I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. That was so not okay, really.’ Especially from Oprah,” she said.
