Gisele Bündchen was at a shopping mall in São Paulo, Brazil when she was spotted by an Elite Model Management scout, she told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. She was just a 13-year-old eating at a McDonald’s, a tremendous treat for a girl from a small town of 17,000, Vanity Fair reported in 2013. Bündchen found herself in her country’s largest and richest city because of her posture. After a growth spurt that put her above 5-foot-9 on a 95-pound frame, Bündchen started to hunch a bit. Her mother noticed.
To remedy the issue, the family’s matriarch signed up Bündchen and two of her sisters, including her twin Patricia, in a local modeling course. “My mom wanted me to be confident,” she told the WSJ. The reward for completing the class was a trip to three big cities, including São Paulo. The scout picked her out among the 50 girls enjoying their sandwich and asked if she was interested in modeling. “I had never seen fashion magazines and I told my mom I didn’t want to be a model, and my mom wasn’t sure, either,” Bündchen told Vanity Fair.
But the scout later convinced her mother to enroll her in an Elite contest. With no experience at all, Bündchen placed second. Thanks to it, she snagged a spot in a contest in Spain. And a supermodel was born.
