Bündchen kept herself out of the public eye for months. "I felt like my pregnancy was a sacred moment for me. I stayed in Boston and I didn't work apart from the contracts I have, and then I only let them use my face."
Today she left the apartment and the baby for the first time to pose for one of her advertising clients, which explains the chignon. "I got to the studio and I felt like I was E.T.—whoa, what's going on? Hair and makeup? I hadn't looked at myself in a mirror for a month and a half. I'd been in my house, in a cocoon with my kids, my husband, my dogs. Usually, as I walk through the door into that atmosphere, I already feel different. There's a button that goes On and I'm On. And when I go On, there is almost no me; there is just a character who is doing all this. This time it wasn't like that. I've been really inside with my husband and my baby, and everything is changed. But the client still deserves respect and professionalism, and I got a little bit concerned because I wasn't feeling it. Makeup was done, hair was done, and I looked in the mirror and I still wasn't seeing the person who's a model."
"Who was the woman you saw in the mirror?" I ask.
"For the first time, I think I actually saw me—the inside—instead of the persona."
The persona turned up for the second photo, much to the relief of the photographer David Sims and the Brazilian client.
Gisele started early; by fifteen she was in a "model apartment" in New York, or folded into airline coach seats to go to model in Italy, France, Japan. There's a small tattoo of a star inside her left wrist. "My grandmother told me and my sisters that everyone has a special star. I looked at my star every night before bed, just like brushing my teeth. When I came to New York and I opened the window of the thirty-fifth-floor apartment, there's light pollution and fog, and I couldn't see my star. So I drew it on my wrist with a pen, but it kept washing away. Then I went to a tattoo parlor on Second Avenue and had it done. It was something I had been missing, and now, no matter where I went, it came with me."
She consciously created the Gisele persona as she started to become a star herself. "I was in the fashion shows in Milan, I was seventeen, I was doing like 100 shows. People were asking, 'How does it feel to be the model of the moment?' It was hard for me to answer as myself. I barely spoke English. I thought, I have to give my best because they trust me with that. I invented this other person, and she could do everything. She wasn't afraid; she was able to be ballsy and risky and sexy or androgynous. She was bold. I had to believe in myself as this person that was strong, up-front, invincible, and positive, who knew what she was doing, even though I really didn't.
"I've worked for fourteen years, but I don't think anybody in the business really knows me, because there is that other person."
Gisele Bündchen's private life has kept its mystery, and she's let her avatar, the übermodel, take all the flashbulbs. Some years ago, when she felt that her life was nothing more than "get up, take pictures, go to sleep, get up, take pictures," she took off six months. She also logged on to Amazon.com and typed in SPIRITUAL BOOKS, which led to a passion for the writings of Miguel Ruiz, which taught her to rely on her own instinct: "The more you trust your intuition, the more empowered you become, the stronger you become, and the happier you become."
Three years ago, when Gisele met Tom Brady, she moved up to Boston to be with him. It was a vocational as well as an emotional turning point.
"I'm a person who normally works 300 days a year, and here I am in Boston in this apartment and Tom's playing, and what do I do here? On my Web site, a lot of girls were asking me questions about feeling awkward. I wanted to work with girls who were fourteen to sixteen." She wanted to be heard and chose the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers—"They take care of girls from shelters, girls who have been abused. I came up with a nine-week program and went to talk to them about empowerment and self-esteem."
It was a shock.
"I thought I was going to be able to save them, guide them. When I got there they were like, 'Who are you?' There were a lot of Latina and black girls. In Brazil, everyone is a mixture, and no one thinks about it. In America, maybe you have more problems with that. It took me a week or two just to get them to sit down with me and talk. I had my yoga teacher come up from New York to teach them yoga. I wanted to share something, but I ended up realizing that you cannot save anybody. I forced it, and it didn't quite go through."
Sejaa was born of that frustration, as a way for Bündchen to impart some of what she has learned, but by subliminal means.
"I wanted to teach girls to love themselves and take care of their bodies. What is the first thing you see every morning? Your face! What do you put every day on your face? Cream! I have made the simplest, purest cream—an everyday cream—but it comes with an affirmation."
Her manufacturers, she says, "were ready to kill me. I wanted the cream to be organic—they explained that if it's organic, it's alive, and that means it can't survive for a long time." The products are now called "natural," the ingredients are held to a high standard of purity, and the preservative is coconut oil.
She also wanted a mud mask. A real mud mask.
"When I was a teenager, I had pimples—oh, God, every time someone looked at my face I thought they were looking at my pimples. I put mud on my face to dry them out, and it worked. "I can do all this because I'm financing it on my own terms, and if I want to give away 5 percent of everything I make, no one can tell me not to."
Sejaa will not be sold in stores but on a Web site, to create a community—"So I can give my little tips, and it's not me telling anyone to have an awakening."
There's a noise in the front hall.
"It's my hubbeeeeeee!" says Gisele.
Into the dark room comes Tom Brady. He's tall, with a deep voice, the face of a young boy, and longish hair. Wearing a dark-blue zipped-up sweater, he treads the carpet with sweetly controlled impatience. Vida the Yorkie wakes from her slumber and goes berserk. Some swift Tom Brady moves prevent Vida from ****ing with joy on the carpet, but the interview is going to be cut short. Patricia brings in the packaging for Sejaa, a recycled-cardboard box with an interesting sliding tab that reveals different—empowering—keywords behind it, and inside, three products: the day cream, a night cream, and the mud mask, along with a bamboo washcloth.
Gisele hands Benjamin to Patricia, rises, and unfolds, all length and purpose, and gets me moving: I'm whisked across the hall to receive a bunch of Miguel Ruiz books in the open kitchen, taken to another floor to see the baby crib and the vast collection of essential oils that have gone into Sejaa, then kissed and hugged before she bathes Benjamin.
There are two secrets, says Gisele on parting:
"The first is wake up in the morning and be grateful you are here, alive and healthy. And the second is: Give."
I follow Patricia's cowboy boots back up the stairs. The rain is still pelting down, black and icy. "How do I call a cab?" I ask.
No need for a cab. Tom Brady drives me back to my hotel.
"Earth Mother" has been edited for Vogue.com; the complete story appears in the April 2010 issue of Vogue.
Reply With Quote