Supermodel Gisele Bündchen did not always feel secure about herself. Despite being a well-known model who was beloved by many, she did not always think she was attractive. In reality, she had a startling epiphany after being brutally bullied by her friends.

The former Victoria’s Secret Angel was the highest-paid model for seventeen consecutive years. The long-legged beauty earned the nickname ‘The Body,’ which got attached to her after the success of Alexander McQueen’s spring 1998 fashion show. However, before the on-start of a super-successful career, she was just a small-town girl from Horizontina.

In her personal memoir, ‘Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life,’ Gisele detailed her experience with beauty. She never considered herself beautiful, as she never paid attention to how she looked. Bündchen was that athletic girl who had a tall frame, bronzed body and played sports all the time. As many know, modeling was never something she wanted to do. Instead, her interest was in playing volleyball. But something changed when her peers started bullying her over her appearance.

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As a teen, she weighed 95 pounds and was 5-foot-9-inches tall. She wrote, “Kids called me Olly, as in Olive Oyl from ‘Popeye.’ I also was called Saracura, a Brazilian bird with stick legs, and Camarão, which means shrimp. My skin turned red when I played volleyball. I began to think, ‘Maybe I am a little strange looking.'”

Where it all started for Gisele Bündchen

Just like any average person, the future runway star was in her awkward teenage phase. To make the matter better, her mother intervened. Vania Nonnenmacher, a bank teller, wanted her thirteen-year-old daughter to improve her posture. Because her classmates teased her, the mother started hunching over. To help her daughter overcome that and to become more confident, Nonnenmacher enrolled Bündchen and her fraternal twin, Pati, in a local modeling course. 

This is where it all started! When all the participants visited Curitiba, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, she got discovered. At a mall in São Paulo, a modeling agent from Elite Model Management scouted her. The amateur model took part in a national modeling contest and ranked second. From there, the only way was up. She moved to São Paulo in 1995. Bündchen also worked in Tokyo for three months.

In 1998, she walked for her very first fashion-show season in Milan, London, Paris, and New York. In London, she walked for Alexander McQueen, who launched her career.

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