Model Paulina Porizkova: ‘With Photoshop, Anybody Can Be a Model’
Porizkova. Photo: Getty Images
Paulina Porizkova, the Czech-born model made a name for herself in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, covering Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue twice, has seen the state of the modeling industry today—and she’s not pleased.
In a new interview with The Cut, Porizkova, 50, says that the rise of celebrities-as-models is making things harder for the women who aren’t already famous.
“I feel really sorry for the girls that are modeling now,” Porizkova laments. “Their work, their business, their opportunities are maybe not a fourth of what we had in the ‘80s. The market has been taken over by celebrities.”
At the same time, Porizkova says that—thanks to post-production retouching tools like Adobe Photoshop—today’s models, themselves, aren’t on the same level that they used to be (ouch!):
“Adobe Photoshop killed the model,” she says. “Before Adobe, you had to look perfect on the photo in order to be able to be in a magazine. You couldn’t have wrinkles. You couldn’t have pimples. You couldn’t have cellulite. […] Now it totally doesn’t matter. Anybody can be a model. Literally a 65-year-old with retouching will now look like a 25-year-old. A weird 25-year-old, but still. That perfection that was once looked for is no longer required.”
…Or maybe society is just ready to embrace a more broad, varied definition of “perfection?” Just a thought.
Either way, Porizkova isn’t the only veteran model who’s spoken up recently about feeing bad for her modern-day counterparts. In June, Tyra Banks sympathized with the “pressures” models face nowadays: namely, being really thin, looking good on and off the runway, competing with celebs, and taking perfect Instagrams.
Banks wrote, “They have to do selfies that make them look relatable, but not TOO relatable, because then people may comment that they don’t understand, ‘Why the heck is THAT girl a friggin’ model??!!!!‘”
People like, say… Paulina Porizkova?
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
