Paulina Porizkova, 57, Says Aging Left Her Feeling ‘Invisible’
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Paulina Porizkova and Maria Shriver had a powerful discussion about aging.
Porizkova shared how getting older and society led her to feel “invisible.”
She also shared how she found a community that rallied together to say: “I’m not ready to be dismissed.”
As a model, Paulina Porizkova spent most of her life being rewarded for good looks and camera-working talent. But when she hit a certain age, everything changed. “My marriage was tanking. My husband did not see me. I was becoming a coffee table at home roughly around the same time I was becoming invisible to the rest of the world,” she recently told Maria Shriver and Sounds True for a conversation titled: Radically Reframing Aging: Today’s Groundbreakers on Age, Health, Purpose & Joy. Against all odds, she was determined not to be dismissed.
Now at 57, Porizkova has become an accidental leader of the pro-aging movement. “I realized there were other women out there that felt like me. And they came to me,” she recalled. In sharing her story online, she found community in those who “felt likewise, like, ‘I’m not ready to be dismissed,’” she explained. At first, the pressure to guide and enlighten the masses was a lot to process. But eventually, she found a way.
“My road started becoming clearer and more focused. And now, with assurance, I can say that yes, [pro-aging] is for all of us,” she said. “It’s for all of us who have raised children, had families, were nurturing, and unselfish, just the way a mother is supposed to be—to care of our homes, to care of our husbands, and then end up... nowhere.”
Because modeling valued her youth, Porizkova finds it difficult to be proud of. “It was a lucky accident. I’m blessed, I’m grateful, very grateful for having been able to do it. But it wasn’t really what I wanted to do with my life,” she explained. However, at 57, she’s realizing that she can use her skills to provide aging representation on the runway.
For example, she told Shriver that she was recently asked to model at a small summit fashion show. She initially thought she would be speaking, and was let down when her modeling services were automatically expected. But then, after she performed, she noticed all of the women her age in the audience giving her a standing ovation.
“What I was hearing from them was, ‘Thank you for making us look good. Thank you for making us look pertinent, for making us look beautiful, for making us relevant,’” she recalled. “And for the first time in my life, I took a measure of joy in modeling. And thinking, ‘Oh, this is that weird thing of leading by example?’ That never ever dawned on me. And it’s so much more powerful now.”
Register to see Porizkova’s full conversation with Shriver here, streaming exclusively via Sounds True.
Porizkova’s book, No Filter, which dives even deeper into her relationship with aging, is out November 15 and currently available for pre-order.
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