Cindy Crawford has accused Oprah Winfrey of treating her like “chattel” during an appearance on her talk show.
The 57-year-old catwalk star opened up about her early days in the modelling industry for Apple TV Plus series ‘The Super Models’ and Cindy looked back on her experience as a 20-year-old model appearing on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ in 1986 alongside her Elite Modeling Agency representative John Casablancas.
In a clip from the show, Oprah is seen asking John: “‘Did she always have this body?” before telling the young model: “Stand up just a moment, now this is what I call a body.”
Speaking in ‘The Super Models’, Cindy said of the experience: “I was like the chattel or a child, be seen and not heard. When you look at it through today’s eyes, Oprah’s like: ‘Stand up and show me your body. Show us why you’re worthy of being here’.
“In the moment I didn’t recognise it and watching it back I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, that was so not okay really.’ Especially from Oprah!”
During the show, Oprah addressed questions to John who was seen speaking on his client’s behalf. At one point, Oprah asked him if Cindy had been through a “training period” and the modelling agency boss replied: “With Cindy, it was much more psychologically she was not sure she really wanted to model … little by little, her ambition is growing. She’s getting a sense, and I’m saying it now on this program, if she wants to she can be number one in the business.”
In ‘The Super Models’ documentary, Cindy revealed she dropped out of college to chase her dream of becoming a model – but it was hard work and she claims to have “passed out” from hunger during long days shooting for catalogues.
She said: “I was 20 years old, I had dropped out of college to model in Chicago and it was great. I was making $1000 a day. The main business there was catalog … I passed out there more than once. Especially right before lunch, you pass out and you would faint. And then they would prop you back up and you would do it all over again.”
