Gigi Hadid Says She Doesn’t Need To Defend Being a Model for Reebok
Models are regularly nabbing roles as athletic brand ambassadors: think Cara Delevingne and Puma, Karlie Kloss and Adidas, Bella Hadid and Nike. And with labels swapping out the traditional athlete who appears in a campaign, the public has responded with some backlash.
For Gigi Hadid, who stars in Reebok’s global #PerfectNever campaign, this is something she says she doesn’t need to defend. Instead, Hadid tries to focus on the positive.
“The people that get it, get it. And the people that don’t, don’t — because they don’t want to,” she told Footwear News at a Reebok event today in New York. “People see me and [celebrities] as these successful people [and they think] there has to be something bad about them: They have to be a bitch, they have to be hard to work with or they have to be anorexic or they have to be eating too much. They always have to find the bad things.”
She added, “If they can’t see the point of me being the face of a Perfect Never campaign [that’s] because I’m trying to show that I’m not perfect when the whole world thinks I am perfect — if you don’t get that, then that sucks for you.”
The #PerfectNever campaign is part of Reebok’s “Be More Human” narrative, which challenges women to break boundaries and challenge the notion of perfection.
Inga Stenta, Reebok’s global marketing director, explained that choosing Hadid for the campaign wasn’t about her modeling career.
“We are working with Gigi because it’s about who she is. Yes, she happens to be a model, but it’s her values and the message that she is delivering and the role model that she is playing for all these women,” said Stenta. “It’s not just about the picture we are using — it’s about the person inside.”
Hadid says it’s all about choosing your battles in the fashion industry: “You fight for what’s important to you, and the people that don’t agree sometimes don’t deserve to understand. That’s why I try to defend the things that I really need to, and if not, then I hope people just look for the best in others.”
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