Heidi Klum is loved by some and hated by others. Now she’s getting to an age that you can’t tell. However, she also likes to celebrate it – currently on every street corner.
Nobody can get past Heidi Klum. Even those who have never seen their successful show “Germany’s Next Top Model” on ProSieben, which has been running since 2006, have inevitably been confronted with them in recent weeks because they have been seen on advertising posters across Germany with their daughter Leni (19).
You were standing at a bus stop on a chilly morning, with a mother and child posing in their underwear right next to you. As is usually the case with Klum, the reactions were diametrically different.
Fans cheered that “two beautiful, confident women” presented themselves. The gender researcher Stevie Schmiedel, on the other hand, wrote that it was strange when a mother, as it were, praised her own daughter, along the lines of: “Here, naked, she’s beautiful too!”
Another message that could be gleaned from the poster is: “Look here, I don’t have to hide behind my daughter!” You definitely don’t see the “model mom” at her age: today Heidi Klum turns 50.
Impressive career
Other giants in their industry have long been written off, but not you. Whereby the following has been true for many years: some love them, others hate them. One of the few points on which Klum critics and fans agree is: the woman is successful. Born and raised in Bergisch Gladbach near Cologne, she won a modeling competition at the age of 18 and soon after moved to the USA.
The big leap in career came through a cover photo in “Sports Illustrated” magazine. From then on she was an internationally sought-after model, but she was seen more often in a bikini than in fashion by Gucci or Dior, in Germany for example as the cover girl of the men’s magazine “GQ” or worldwide as the star of the “Victoria’s Secret” underwear show. With numerous appearances on US talk shows, she proved that she had more to offer than dull beauty.
From Bergisch Gladbach to LA – that’s an achievement that has to be acknowledged first. The only question is whether, precisely because of its great success, it has not also caused a great deal of damage. Her show “Germany’s Next Top Model” (GNTM) is repeatedly associated with a negative self-image of young girls and diseases such as anorexia.
show in criticism
Klum and the broadcaster ProSieben have always denied this and have been countering the accusation for several seasons by also having model candidates for plus sizes with them. Critics object that this has more of an alibi function and the dominant message – slim bodies are beautiful! – hardly put into perspective.
What is striking is how little the show has changed since 2006. Diversity has also found its way into GNTM, but you can easily switch it on again years later, and déjà-vus are already appearing all the time:
Flanked by fellow judges, Klum sorts out candidates with cast-iron happiness and an unconditional will to execute. “Only one of you can become Germany’s next top model” and “Unfortunately I don’t have a photo for you today” are sentences that have cult status for the fan community.
This remarkably stable following seems to appreciate repeating the same thing over and over again, like the infamous makeover where some of the contestants get a whole new look. The objection that has been raised for many years that very few winners then really take off in the modeling world leaves the public cold. In general, one sometimes gets the impression that especially convinced feminists treat themselves to the show as a break from politically correct everyday life.
Heidi Klum in private
Who Heidi Klum actually is remains largely hidden. In 2004 she herself said in a live interview with the US television station CBS that it was not her dream figure but “stubbornness and hard work” that helped her achieve global success. She never gave up and always worked a bit harder and longer than the others.
In 2022, she revealed in GNTM that she had been teased at school because of her many pimples as “Pizza Face”. “That’s how you get a hard shell from the start.”
Heidi Klum hardly ever grants interviews anymore – she just doesn’t need it anymore. When that was different, in the early years of GNTM, she was friendly and brash in personal conversations, similar to television. There are many indications that the media figure and the private person Heidi Klum are largely congruent.
The boundaries between business and personal are definitely fluid. Before her marriage to Tom Kaulitz in 2019, she posted the most eager and revealing. On her Instagram account, she was seen lying in bed with the Tokio Hotel guitarist or eating spaghetti from a shared fork.
Klum’s partners have been getting younger and younger for a while. Her first husband, Australian star hairdresser Ric Pipino, was 13 years her senior. Then came the 23-year-old father of her first daughter Leni, the Italian sports manager Flavio Briatore.
This was followed by husband number two, British pop singer Seal, father of their two sons and another daughter and ten years older. Then the cover: After separating from Seal, she began a relationship with the US art dealer Vito Schnabel, who was 13 years her junior. And then Kaulitz, who is 16 years younger than her.
Connected to home
Her dominant father Günther Klum, who used to be her manager and had the GNTM winners under contract, has been quiet lately. In the “Spiegel” interview he recently denied that Heidi had broken with him. “It is correct that the station management no longer considered my work important,” said the 77-year-old.
Another prominent Bergisch Gladbacher, the former CDU interior expert Wolfgang Bosbach (70), tells the German Press Agency that Klum generously supports social projects in her hometown “without making a fuss about this commitment”.
For her 50th birthday, Bosbach also has a personal message ready for Heidi Klum: “I still know her from before, and what I’ve always admired about her is her steep career, combined with great affection for her family and her Home. And that’s what I wish for her: that it stays that way, that she never forgets where her home is.” He was “very confident”.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
