Before Cindy Crawford earned her stripes as one of the most famous supermodels in the world, she had a hard time convincing her parents of her unique career choice.
The global runway star and cover girl, 57, revealed that her father, John Crawford, didn’t initially comprehend that modeling was a viable line of work.
“My dad really didn’t understand that modeling was a real career,” she said in a preview for Apple TV+’s new documentary series “The Super Models,” which People obtained Thursday.
“He thought modeling was, like, another name for prostitution.”
Cindy’s dad and her mom, Jennifer Sue Crawford-Moluf, were eventually supportive and even went with her to her “very first modeling appointment.”
In the sneak peek, Cindy said she “never even thought about modeling” before taking the plunge into the cutthroat industry.
“I didn’t even know it was a real job. I didn’t know how I would get from DeKalb, Ill., to a magazine.”
Cindy previously shared her experience of posing for her first portrait at age 16 back when she still lived at home with her parents.
“When I was 16, Roger Legel, a local photographer in my small town of DeKalb, Ill., asked to photograph me for the college newspaper,” she told Vanity Fair in 2016.
“I agreed, and he shot this picture at the backyard pool of my high school boyfriend.”
Cindy said the photo shoot shifted her perspective of the industry and made her want to pursue a career in front of the lens.
“I was still a teenager and dreamed of becoming something big — a nuclear physicist or the first woman president, the two biggest jobs I could think of,” she told the outlet at the time.
“Doing this first shoot changed my life. The photographer encouraged me to go to Chicago to try to find an agent.
“I went to Chicago, ended up signing with Elite, and from there started doing catalog shoots as well as working with Victor Skrebneski — the most important photographer in Chicago,” she continued.
“This one photograph opened my eyes to a whole new world and started me down the path of modeling.”
