Supermodel Cindy Crawford seems to have a heart and soul as beautiful as her outward appearance. She is an advocate for mental health awareness, fights for women’s empowerment, cares about the health and wellness of children and young adults, and speaks on behalf of anti-bullying efforts.
“I hope when we look back, we’ll be horrified by the judgments we make on skin color or country of origin or sexual identity. We’ll be horrified by how we focused on otherness instead of what makes us all human,” she wrote in a blurb for Time magazine.
Crawford lost her brother to childhood leukemia when he was three and has been passionate about her charity work for cancer ever since. She has been a long-time supporter of the pediatric oncology program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where her brother was treated, and is an honorary Board Member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Last year, she recreated her iconic Pepsi commercial to raise funds for the American Family Children's Hospital. She is also a supporter of the Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Crawford, who grew up in Illinois, was spotted in 1982 shucking corn by a local news photographer who asked to take her picture for DeKalb Nite Weekly. She received enough positive feedback that she decided to venture into modeling by entering the Look of the Year modeling contest (later renamed Elite Model Look) held by Elite Model Management, in which she earned a place as a finalist. This was enough to secure her professional representation and, in 1986, she moved to New York City, where her career promptly took off.
In 1991, Crawford, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, and Linda Evangelista walked the runway for Gianni Versace, eliciting a standing ovation from the audience. This is considered by many industry professionals to be the official beginning of the Era of the Supermodel.
From that moment until her retirement in 2000, Crawford was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, models in the world, and a partial count in 1998 totaled more than 500 appearances in dozens of fashion and lifestyle magazines. Since retiring, she has passed the torch to her look-alike daughter Kaia, who is currently making waves in the fashion and influencer industry.