“I feel like my job is to be this beautiful girl who sells clothes.”
After a very successful Victoria Secret Fashion Show last week, supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio landed a feature interview with Net-A-Porter’s The Edit and spoke of her family, motherhood, and modeling.
The 32-year old Brazilian told the e-magazine that she considers herself “a little bit” of a “feminist” because she came “from a family where women are very strong. They rule the house and I’m the same.”
Setting her sights high, Ambrosio has been engaged to businessman Jamie Mazur since 2008 and soon will be launching her own brand called Ale by Alessandra which will include fragrance, clothing, and accessories.
“Hopefully, one day I’ll have an empire,” Ambrosio said. “When I started modeling at 15, after modeling school, I thought it would all be over for me by 19, but that’s just not the case anymore.”
The Victoria Secret’s Angel also spoke of parenthood and the struggle she went through the lose the baby weight after having her first child, Anja, five years ago.
“I knew that I had the show to do after having [Anja] — and actually I was expecting my body to go back quicker. People kept telling me that I would bounce back straight away, but a week after giving birth I still had that balloon belly,” she said. “It was the first time in my life that I had to diet.”
While pregnant, Ambrosio gained 60 pounds and began seeing a trainer six times a week.
“It was 1,500 calories a day as I was breastfeeding,” she said, referring to a calorie-controlled meal service she signed up for.
However, Ambrosio never plans to go under the knife again after having a botched procedure at age 11.
“I always knew I wanted to be a model so I decided to have my ears pinned back, because they stuck out a bit. I found this doctor in my hometown [of Erechim] in Brazil who had only done it once before, so I was a guinea pig,” she said. “The first few nights, it felt like someone had cut off my ears. For a year, I had to go back for mini-surgeries. Doctors say they can fix them, but cosmetic surgery freaks me out now.”
But as a mother, daughter, and “feminist,” how does her family feel about her modeling career?
“Brazil is a very sexual country,” the 5-foot-9 model said. “Women are always showing their boobs and butts on the beach. And I’ve been careful: Even if I did Playboy, I wouldn’t want to do something that looks vulgar.”
When asked if she would ever consider posing for Hugh Hefner’s magazine, Ambrosio said, “I would have to discuss it with my family and make sure it was artistic. Cindy Crawford and Stephanie Seymour did it and they made me want to model. It’s funny how casual you become about [your breasts] after children. I mean, you breast-feed in front of your parents. … Still after two kids, they’re not the same. I’m afraid of having them done, though. There’s too much of that in L.A.”
According to the L.A. Times, the mother of two took her children (Anja, 5, and Noah, 19 months) to see Santa over the weekend and captioned a shot of her little ones getting ready to meet “Papai Noel” on Instagram.
image via: Facebook