Cindy Crawford

own thing. Especially my daughter was you know fully launched, and then all of a sudden she had no work, so she was back here and I think she fostered five puppies and then finally the fifth one stuck, so and then she got another one. So we have like four dogs now, which is crazy because I didn't grow up with dogs, and I'm not ever the person you would have thought would have four dogs. Hello, I'm Mini Driver and welcome to many questions. I've always loved Priest

question app. It was originally an eighteenth century poly game meant to reveal an individual's true nature, but with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Proof's questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone they are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself. What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?

What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to

engage with. My guest today is Cindy Crawford. Cindy has been an iconic part of American culture since the early nineties, a supermodel, a business when, and a mother. It's really worth remembering that she was actually given a scholarship to Northwestern to study chemical engineering when finding great success as a model changed her career path entirely. She said to me, the good thing about having a brain is that you

can take it with you. She's a woman very much in charge of her own narrative and the course that she charts, and it was a real pleasure getting to know her a little better and having the opportunity to chat. So, what person, place, or experience has most altered your life? I did home birth? Oh did he? Yes? Oh I tried. I tried. God tell me no, that's amazing. So in the beginning, right when I got pregnant, I was not planning on it. Both my sisters said had kids, they

had epidurals. I was like, sign me up. That's the way you have kids. That's the modern way now. And then while I was pregnant, a friend of mine suggested I go to this premat or yoga class, and the woman who taught the class grew muke. She made me really look at when you're pregnant, you're not sick, you're actually super strong. And through some of the people in that class the idea of home birth, and I met a midwife and it just resonated with me. And I

didn't put pressure on myself. My plan was just to stay at home as long as I could, and if I needed to go to the hospital, I would go. Wasn't like I'm going to stay home no matter what. And I think for me having that experience was very empowering because when you say to most women who are like who delivered your baby, They're like dr so, and so I'm like I did. My midwife was there, she was the assist, yes, and you know, my husband was there.

But I felt so empowered afterwards, and I felt like doing that even like right after my son was born, I was like wow. I mean, of course I was holding my baby and so happy for that, but I was also like, you are amazing. You did that. And that was like my first other than being pregnant and there's all you know, you're saying to your baby and all that stuff, But that was like my first act as a mother, and I felt so strong and empowered

that I think that it helped me. Like I came at it from a place of like I've got this. It's so great. It's such a brilliant place to begin that extraordinary journey. There's something that brings it into focus of our strength, a superhuman strength in growing and birthing a baby. It's magical, Yeah, because I never really understood how tough I was before that. Really, Yeah, especially like in that visceral physical I mean, it hurts having a baby's for sure, and I just I didn't come from

silver spoon. But like my life in my twenties was very pampered, flying on the concorde and people doing my nails and hair and makeup and handing me dresses and get machinos or whatever. And then that just put me right. It's like as raw of an experience as I think, you know, it levels you, It really does. It levels you. And again I think it takes off unnecessary corners that one might have as a person and really shapes you.

My mom always said, she was like, I don't know about reincarnation, but I know we live about a thousand different lives in this one. Yeah, and this is a tricky question of where and when were you happiest because there are many different, many different lives that you've had. But can you think of what that would be? Yeah, I mean I think today, but if you asked me tomorrow, I would say that day. It's funny. There's a homeopathic doctor out here that I see and I adore. He's

like a therapist and homeopathic doctor. And one of his questions he asked is, on a scale of one to ten, rate yourself on happiness. And I always laugh because I'm like, but that's not my goal. I'm way more interested in just being present what is the moment, offering and meeting that moment. So if it's sadness, I don't want to be happy in a sad moment. I don't want to be happy in a serious moment. I just want to be present. I guess what makes me happiest is being present.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it totally does. I mean I think that if you can get that bird's eye view to see the panopoly of a life, happiness has its place. We put so much stake in it. It has such a premium, and the reality is we're not supposed to be happy all the time. We're happy all the time, we'll be extremely unmotivated, you know, I just stay in bed all day. We also would be completely, you know, tone deaf to anything that's going on around us.

And it is interesting because like as mother's like, I just want my child to be happy, but the kid can't be happy all the time, and you've got to teach them how to be unhappy, how to be effectively unhappy in the world right, and that this too shall pass. And in that pain or you know, loneliness or whatever their experience, seeing there's a lesson and there's beauty, and then it also helps you appreciate the times where you

really are just unburdened by any of that. Do you think that at times in your life when you've been unhappy, have you consciously mind for the things that will make you feel better or did you pretty early on become comfortable with just staying in whatever emotional state you were in. Yeah, I think that's been more developed. It's been a while where I feel like I don't put that pressure on myself to be happy every day. So if I'm not happy, I don't feel like I'm depressed or it's a bad day.

One of the things that I talked about this recently, I did this talk for like the Vatican Conference with a friend of mine who's a doctor, and we were talking about health and mental health, and I think one of the things I've learned to do effectively is in the way I described it to him, was like, Okay, whatever you're worrying about, whatever burden you're carrying around, just put it own at night, get in bed and put it to bed, put it in God's hands. Wherever you

want to put it. You can pick it up in the morning. But you've got to like give yourself a break from it. That's such great advice. I tell my son, just don't let it drive the bus at nighttime. Put it in the back of the bus with the luggage. Yeah, Or I would even get it off the bus. I'd get on a different bus for the night. I don't know, but yeah, Like a lot of times you wake up and you realize, oh, it's not quite as heavy as it felt yesterday, or somehow it resolves on its own.

I'm the type of person like that thing when someone calls you and they're like or text you, please call me back, Like my brain instantly goes to like the worst thing possible, and then you call them back and you're like, they're like something silly. I don't know why our human brains do that. So I'm like the type. I'm like, I gotta call them back right away because I don't want to worry about this any longer than I have to. It takes so much more energy worrying

than it is letting it go. You're right, I don't know why the human brain does it either. The monkey mind. Yes, maybe it's there so that we can choose something else and that we didn't have that dissonance, we wouldn't choose something else. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of my philosophy on happiness in general. I like it. It's good. It's stoic. Actually it's stoic, and it's absolutely right. Just be present

in this decade that we're in. I think that's one of the real gifts, is being able to examine the

things that work and the things that are still tricky. Yeah, And I mean, look, there's some things about getting older that aren't great, but I think that is really one of the things I've noticed in myself and my friends and my sisters is with age, you do kind of know yourself, even your flaws, and you're hopefully you can even learn to be accepting of those as well, like the way that we view our friends through that lens of like, oh she's this, but I love her anyway,

or the way you know, if we can learn to love ourselves in that way too, with all of our flaws and imperfections, but also with all of our wisdom and experience, that I think is a kind and graceful way to age. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, wisdom and grace doesn't get enough play. In my opinion, what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you. I mean, there's so many different kinds of love. I mean what comes to mind is mother to child and that unconditional love.

And I feel very blessed that I had that from my own mother. So having that gave me confidence to become a mother myself and feeling like I would be able to give that to my own children. But also I mean romantic love, and romantic love that turns into a twenty three year marriage. Obviously it grows in changes.

But I think for me in terms of romantic love, what I'm really looking for to be known right, Like to be seen and not just the pretty sides, not just a polite sides, Like I don't mind that part of a relationship where it's a little bit scrappy and vulnerable and roll up your sleeves and let's get into it. By being able to be vulnerable with someone and them still loving you like, that's a great gift. Did that

take a minute to work out? Because I mean, I've got to say you are beloved by an awful lot of people. I mean, for everything that has come after coining the phrase supermodel. How is that when you are basically loved for how incredibly beautiful you are, how does that sense of self grow be like beyond that? Because it's it's true you were growing up in front of everybody, and you're received and held in a very particular regard. It must make you question what what it is people

love about you? Well, it's certainly it puts a pressure on you, like to be Cindy Crawford, like to deliver that, do you know what I mean. It's like, okay, well I'm doing this thing, Cindy Crawford, better show up. And I'm not always in the mood to be Cindy Crawford, right, But that's a thing. I mean, it's it's an aspect of who I am. But you know, at home, I'm a very different person. And fortunately my husband he likes me no makeup, you know, jeans and a T shirt

like that's his favorite. And I think realizing that, you know, kind of me in my most raw self is what my family loves and help me realize like that's the truth of my life. And this other thing, which is super fun and you know, we play with at times, and I've been able to take that and you know, use it as a platform with a skin care line or with my philanthropy whatever. And I feel, especially you know, as I get older, some of me wants to just like check out and be like, Okay, I'm done with

that whole thing. But I also feel some respond stability to women who are my age that have been following me for thirty five years or whatever. I don't want to tell them like, okay, ladies, now it's time for all of us to be invisible. Even though sometimes I might not want to do the photo shoot or whatever. I'm like, but is this helping women see their beauty and the beauty of age in a way? And like,

I just did a photo shoot and it's funny. I did it for Brazilian Vogue and it was with these photographers who adored I had never worked with them before, but I knew their work and the pictures were kind of like sexy. But I was like, look, they can't be coy at all. I'm fifty five. I'm not coy, like that can't It's not that kind of sexy that works at twenty or twenty five. And I don't even feel that, like I don't even that would be so

inauthentic to the pictures. I'm like they hadn't really thought about it that way, and it was fun, like us working out together what that means? You know, It's not like, oh, I'm holding up a sheet and I'm who you know, That's not who I am at this point in my life, do you know what I mean? I'm fascinating conselte people who are on an academic path who make this you turn into whatever this world that we live in. And I wondered, did you have to find like a new

fuel like when you had this idea. I mean, Northwestern is not to be sniffed out like that's it's an amazing school. And if you have a really good brain, did you find this whole new career in this whole new world? Did you find it as you went along or did you suddenly think that something had been switched on in you? I think growing up, you know, blue collar and not having money, like always motivated in a very different way than for instance, my daughter is. So

it wasn't like an esoteric decision about modeling. It was like what it pays this much? You know? And the great thing about a brain as it comes with you so even having an academic brain, I just kind of looked at modeling that way. I brought that with me. I learned, I absorbed. I paid attention to all the creatives that I was around, and it was actually really good for me because I remember my mother. My mother

was a very young mother. She got pregnant with my sister when she was sixteen, and so I had my sister when she was seventeen, me when she was nineteen, two more kids by the time she was twenty three. So and my mom was a great mom, but I think there was a part of her that was creative

and she never had found an outlet for it. She used to do these paintings on our sheets and pillows, she decorated like the part that you saw, like the edge, and I think because she didn't have that place to be creative really and and get accolades for it, somehow I got the message that I wasn't creative, and it's a weird thing for a kid to feel. I guess in a weird way, I was just like, well, I'm not good at art, or i'm not good at this, or so I didn't have a comfortable place to express

my creativity. So I was very comfortable with calculus and you know, things that where you could add up the numbers and you always got the same answer, whereas creative writing or even Spanish things that were less concrete and tangible were more intimidating to me. And then I got in this, you know I called the fabulous world of fashion, and I'm surrounded by creatives and saying, well, you know what, I am creative in the way that I'm creative. I mean,

we all are creative, absolutely absolutely. It's the way that school kind of tries to pigeonhole you into, oh you're an art kid or your theater kid, or you're a football kid. But even a lot of the best athletes, the way they approached the game is creatively. I mean. And don't I think that modeling actually helped me tap into the creative side of my brain, But of course I still had like that analytical side as well. Was

probably really good but probably really protected you. So I love what you said about how your brain goes with you. I didn't think about that, but yeah, it's just it's just maybe lighting up different parts, you know. Yeah, do you feel quite practical about your evolution? Like it seems to me that you're extremely practical about it. It's like, okay, well this is this is what's happening now, I am now this person. Do you find that emotionally those parts

of yourself evolve as well? Someone said to me recently, and this, really I think we'll answer it is that when they have anxiety, it's when their actions aren't aligning with their sole purpose. So whenever they have anxiety, they look at like, Okay, what am I doing? That isn't authentic? But I think to your question, it's not that I'm so practical about it, just like it's my body just knows it doesn't feel right, and it's like, oh like,

I like, this feels yucky. And I don't want to portray especially I'm not an actress, so I'm only portraying a version of me. It's interesting. It dove tails back into that notion of presence, and in order to know yourself, you have to remain extremely present in each age of your life, in each moment of your life, and so you can be ruthless with being able to smell inauthenticity. I suppose I go at school, but it's not for me, right,

not for me today or maybe ever again. And I think that's part of the reason that my career has lasted as long as it has and has evolved. When I had kids, I did stuff with like a baby company, and then as my skin started aging, I launched it. Well we called it age maintenance, but somehow that isn't as sexy as anti aging, but age maintenance, like, I'm pretty happy with that. Age maintenance is wearing like a

boiler suit and is busy. Yeah. Well, and also it's kind of like, look, I can't erase time and we're all aging, but I can take care of myself as I age, and that to me is like realistic. But somehow it doesn't have the ring of anti age jan which we all know who can anti age like you can't, But it's it's it's really good marketing because at something you're definitely against it and being against aging, but I'm always like, it's better than the alternative. You know, I

can't agree with you more. What would be your last meal? Oh gosh, I love food, but I think it would be more about like a shared meal, do you know what I mean? Like me sitting alone eating anything would yeah be good? Like I've had very nice. You know, room service by myself around the world. But I think that room service by myself might be my new last meal. Actually that is really funny. Room service by myself. No, I mean, and I do love sometimes, especially when my

kids real little. I loved being in a hotel room, vine able to take a long bath or whatever. But I think now any meal shared with friends or even like now my children's friends, where sometimes my husband and I notice ourselves at the grown up table, you know, we have to step back and let the young people talk about just being around that kind of energy and

ideas and the way they think about the world. I just feel so energized being around them too, because you just realize, well, you know, there's always this forward motion with thoughts and ideology, and you know, what is their normal, and it's it's interesting. That's cool. I like that your your last meal. You're also thinking about, you know, what's coming next, like what's happening, Like what's the evolution of this?

Like that's very cool to be what some people would think of as an ending point and be considering what comes after it. So in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of what you might consider a personal disaster. Yeah, so I lost your brother to leukemia when I was ten, and obviously that was tragic for my whole family. Only until I became a mother myself did I realize how it must have

affected my parents. But I do think somehow, and I think it's partly the way that my mother explained death to us, even though it was sad. Of course, my mother wasn't like, she didn't lay all that heaviness on us, and I think that I guess I started kind of picturing him almost as like the rocket fuel that helped launch me and my family. Really we were definitely, you know, lower class, and so we didn't do a lot of philanthropy.

But because of that loss of my brother, my mom you know, did bake sales or she started at dance marathon where we'd raised two hundred dollars. But it it showed me that even though you don't have a lot, you can still be philanthropic, and it kind of started me being interested in philanthropy. M I'm so sorry that you ship rather how awful, how awful for your mama. I remember when I had my son, I was like, oh my mom, and I'm like Okay, how did you do it? And she said, I had three other kids.

She's like, you guys were all looking at me, like what's for breakfast? And how should we feel? And so she just had to to do it. It's really great hearing that when you just said, very plainly, when she talked to us about death, we don't talk about it. We just don't. Whether it's that we're frightened of it happening to someone that we love or ourselves, we don't have any tools with which to deal with it. And actually it is. It is the biggest part of life

other than life itself. And I don't know. In this grieving process that I'm in right now, I realized that my conversations before I knew that my mom was sick, that we had about death throughout my life was so helpful and so brilliant and so robust and actually gave me a framework to now be in this grief and to at least it's so important. Yes, because I remember going back to school after my my brother died in

like no one knew what to say to me. Right It was like because the kids were so they knew something bad had happened, but they didn't know how to approach me. And you know, Randy and I've lost a few friends that our kids were close to. And I remember calling a therapist and saying, like, how do I

talk to my kids about this? And she gave me some very good advice because the kids don't even know how to feel, so you tell them ahead of time, like you broadcasted that that to them, like I have some very sad news because I don't know, like death, how am I supposed to feel? It's weird and they get uncomfortable. So you say some very sad news and then we say our friend and then you say died. You don't say passed away or you've got to be

clear to kids. And then she just said, if you have any questions, you can ask them and only answer the questions they asked like they're processing. And all of that helped us because if you years later, my husband's father died, and so again we had had these like little baby levels of talking about death and law, so that when they really lost their grandpa, who they were very close to, we had some experience with, you know, navigating that. Yeah, I feel like there should be closest

in school. I feel like it shouldn't be the taboo that it is, I know, And there's something incredibly beautiful and empowering about not being frightened of it as well. No, exactly. You know, I just lost my grandmother at age, and I mean she had an amazing life. She died peacefully, and even to be able to talk about that, like she was ready, I think she was ready. She was tired, but like some people don't even know what to say

about that, and it's like, no, she was awesome. I'll let me tell you about her, you know that kind of thing. It's really nice when you get to talk about them. That's the piece that I like. And it also is it's a way out of just being sad or crying. It's actually it feels so much more creative of and so much more in line with who that person was to talk about them. I found that helps. Talking about my mom is telling a story about her, as opposed to saying how much I miss or I'm

sorry that somebody else. Mrs Herbert, it's good, it's good to talk. Yeah, And that's how it really, you know, And again, like everyone's beliefs are different, but in that way, they really are still here. You know because the stories and you know the memories are still here. Cindy has an amazing skincare line called Meaningful Beauty, and on June twenty one this year, it is expanding and launching an

age proof hair care system, so check it out. Many Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music so Very Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music

by Aaron Kaufman, Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver