one Silver Is the New Blond Life keeps getting better At fifty-nine years old, I let my hair go silver. Two years later, I was pregnant on the cover of New York magazine. (Well, I wasn''t really pregnant, but it looked pretty convincing.) At sixty-seven, I walked in my first runway show at New York Fashion Week with women who were a third of my age. At sixty-nine, I became a CoverGirl. Can you imagine? I never did. I would never have predicted that letting my hair go gray would be the secret to becoming a supermodel. I first walked a runway at fifteen, and they told me I''d be done at eighteen.
As a model, I never expected to be carrying on this long-and certainly not in my prime at seventy-one. But here I am, fifty-six years later, and I''m still just getting started. Women don''t have to slow down as they age. I''m running like a speeding bullet. Exploring everything, having fun, working more than ever, working on social media to make sure that I''m working more than ever, and having the most fun. Did I mention fun? If men don''t have to slow down, we shouldn''t have to either. Don''t let aging slow you down or stop you from moving ahead. Look after yourself as best you can by eating well, smiling, and being active, happy, and confident.
I have never been afraid of aging. Funny enough, when I see the wrinkles on my face-and after sixty, wrinkles on my thighs and my arms-I find them amusing. I''m just so happy to be in good health. I started modeling as a teenager in Pretoria, South Africa, because a friend of my parentsÕ ran a modeling school and agency. Her name was Lettie, and her husband had a plane, like my father. Every Sunday night, they would have dinner with our family. Lettie was very beautiful and graceful, and she had a quiet confidence that made you want to do what she asked you to. When my twin sister, Kaye and I were fifteen, Lettie invited us to do her modeling course for free, which we did without giving it much thought.
For the final walk, the one that would get us our diplomas, I made myself a pink suit in the style of Chanel. I had my brown hair done, and I did my own makeup. Lettie was the one who started hiring me to model, too. I would do runway shows on Saturday mornings in a department store when she asked, or print jobs. I didn''t feel special or privileged about being a model. It was just a job. It was better-paying than other jobs, which was nice, but when I found that out, it surprised me. You went somewhere, you put on a dress, you walked around the room, you went home.
Why would that be well-paid? But it was, especially for a girl my age. I had no idea back then that I would still be a model at seventy-one. You just had to look around the room at these things to understand that all the models were very young. I knew it was temporary, and it didn''t bother me at all. I was just happy to get paid. My goal wasn''t to model; it was to go to university. I still modeled in university, to my surprise. As planned, I got my degree, and then I got married: another surprise.
My goal wasn''t to have children so quickly either. I didn''t realize I could fall pregnant on a honeymoon and have three kids in three years. Elon, Kimbal, and Tosca were three more surprises. With each child, I added a few blond highlights to my hair. After Tosca, I was completely blond. I started modeling again after I''d had my three kids, because Lettie asked me to. Her agency needed somebody to do mother-of-the-bride runway shows, and they couldn''t have an eighteen-year-old do it. All the other girls were too young.
So she asked me, because I was a very grown-up twenty-eight. In this way, I became the oldest model in South Africa. I moved to Durban as a single mother at thirty-one because I was running away from my husband. I couldnÕt afford to have anybody else color my hair anymore, so I started doing it myself and it became various shades of blond and orange. Blorange, as they call it. It was pretty bad. Very frizzy, and I was cutting it myself to save money. They still let me model for some reason, so I didnÕt worry about it.
It didnÕt affect my nutrition practice, which I had started at twenty-two in my apartment in Pretoria, in any case. As long as I could help my clients, they didnÕt pay attention to what my hair looked like. At forty-two, when I moved to Toronto, I went to school for my PhD while I modeled and taught, keeping current in both professions. I had a model portfolio that showed that I could get work, so a Toronto agency was willing to take me on because they thought they could make money with me. Most of the modeling jobs out there were for younger women, but sometimes they just needed an older model in order to make it look realistic. That was when I did my first grandmother ad, a front cover. I was only forty-two! I was not the only model in Toronto in my forties, of course. While usually I''d be the only person at a modeling job who wasn''t in my teens or twenties, that was not always the case.
Remember, this was not high fashion or haute couture. This was not New York Fashion Week or Milan. I remember once doing a runway show where it was all older women and guys. Afterward, we all went out for a drink. One of the guys said to me, "You''re going to have to buy your own drink, because you''re the only person who hasn''t been in bed with me." I just looked at him. He said, "Yeah, I''ve done mattress ads with all the other models." That was the kind of job available for older models.
Advertisements for sales on beds, and that kind of thing. I didn''t care, because I wasn''t there to be exciting. It was just work, and I needed to work. I kept modeling because it was fun, kept me looking good, and got me away from the office to explore different cities and to meet new people. In those years, they had to book me three weeks ahead of time to not disrupt my practice, and I wouldn''t model more than four days a month. It paid as much as my dietetics practice, which was my stable and basic income, and I wasn''t going to rock that boat-that would cover everyday expenses, rent, bus fare, school uniforms, gas, and car services. Modeling enabled me to buy a cheap flight to visit family, some clothes, or something we needed for the apartment. Sometimes I would get a dress.
Modeling was the cherry on top. I didn''t even tell my nutrition clients I modeled, and because there was no social media, nobody knew. Sometimes someone would say, "Is that you in a magazine?" And I''d say, "Yes. I''m the Sears housecoat queen." That was my job. If Sears had a housecoat, they called me in to make it look good. By the time I was in my fifties, I was living in New York. I did a few great campaigns, then signed with a bigger agency, because I thought it would increase my exposure.
It did the opposite. I went from sometimes modeling to barely modeling. I''d email and say I didn''t join them to stop modeling. They would write back to say that there was no work for me. I''d call. They''d say, "They just don''t want to see you. They prefer the other models who are better-known than you." I would think, "But they''re not that well-known either.
" I couldn''t understand why the clients never wanted to see me anymore. I''d been modeling for decades, but maybe it was time. I was told that nobody liked my look anymore. By chance, I would run into some people who worked in the business. They would stop me in the street or in a restaurant and say, "We''ve been trying to book you, but you''re never available." I would go to the agency and say, "People have been trying to book me." "No, they haven''t. They''re getting you mixed up with somebody else.
" That was when I decided on my own to stop coloring my hair. I thought, "Well, I''m barely modeling. I might as well see what color I am underneath." My hair started to grow out, and it looked terrible. There was a white patch on top and blond hair at my shoulders. As a dietitian, it doesn''t matter what color hair you have, as long as you''re good. On the advice of my best friend, Julia Perry, I cut my hair very short. It was an edgy, exciting look, nothing like I''d ever done before.
After I went gray, the agency didnÕt send me out for six months. It was a very painful period. It started to seem as though there would be no more opportunities for me there, that perhaps this was the end of my modeling career. Then something interesting happened. A casting director called my agency to book me for the cover of Time magazine. This time my agency couldn''t say that I was not available, as the director''s office was a block away from my home and she saw me walking my dog every morning. Then they had to book me for the job. That was how I wound up in Time magazine, on the front page of the Health section.
I realized that there was work out there for me. It wasn''t about my look. It was about my agency. I needed a plan. Everybody has their own agenda. I wanted to take advantage of whatever work opportunities existed for me. My agents should have been pro.