For her 60th birthday, Porizkova posted side-by-side images on Instagram of her body at 60. In the first, she’s kneeling on a beach cabana in a bikini. The caption reads: “This is me. Vacation, pretty light, posing for a shot.”
In the second, she stands for a casual selfie in her bathroom at home. “This is also me. Home, not great light, not posing,” she wrote.
Alongside the images, she reflected on what 60 means to her, writing, “This is 60. This is 60 years of sometimes healthy eating, sometimes not. 60 years of sometimes working out, sometimes not. 60 years of doing the right things followed by doing the wrong things and over again and again. It’s 60 years of learning of what works and what doesn’t. And just as I think I’ve figured it out, everything changes and I have to start again.”
She ended, “The beauty of 60 is that now I understand the importance is IN the lesson, not passing the exam.”
In a world where beauty standards keep getting more extreme, and social media often favors faces that look decades younger than they are, many have found it refreshing to see a supermodel be candid about aging. The comments quickly flooded with gratitude and personal stories.
One person wrote: “Thank you for sharing and being real. I often see images of women on here going ‘this is’ and then whatever age they are but it’s ALWAYS a super flattering photo not ever the realness of our ageing bodies. How are we ever going to accept ourselves if we’re not seeing ourselves ✌🏽🧡🦋”
In an interview back in January with TODAY, Paulina reflected on her career, her new partnership with Estée Lauder, and her life now — sharing how she hopes to use her platform to shift the conversation around aging and beauty. “I’m almost 60! I’m like two months from 60, and I’m so excited. I have never been so thrilled about a birthday in my life,” she said
When asked how she challenges the stigma around aging, Paulina replied, “We’re so scared of wrinkles, have you noticed that? We are so terrified of wrinkles because I suppose wrinkles make us no longer relevant, no longer sexy, no longer desirable, and as women, that has been sort of our calling card.” Yet, she added, “I keep looking at wrinkles, mine, yours, any woman that I see, and I think, ‘It’s your map of life. I see who you were as the person.'”
