Gigi Hadid Acknowledges Her Privilege
The 23-year-old supermodel isn’t ignorant of the opportunities that her family has allowed her.
Gigi Hadid has certainly come into her own in recent years, both proving her talent in the modeling industry and reaching massive celebrity status internationally. While she does maintain that she has labored for her great achievements, and rightfully so, she also keeps a sense of humility.
Gigi’s parents, Yolanda and Mohamed Hadid, amassed their fortune through Yolanda’s modeling career–which later led to her role on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–and Mohamed’s work as a luxury real estate developer. Her former stepfather, music producer David Foster, was also involved in raising Gigi and her siblings.
“I know I come from privilege, so when I started there was this big guilt of privilege, obviously,” Hadid told Vogue Australia, “I’ve always had this big work ethic because my parents came from nothing and I worked hard to honour them.”
It is true that Yolanda was self-made, and she recalls that as a young model in the US, her mother would send the money she earned home to her family back in the Netherlands. “There are so many girls who come [from] all over the world and work their arses off and send money home to their families like my mother did, and I wanted to stand next to them backstage and for them to look at me and respect me and to know that it’s never about me trying to overshadow or take their place,” Hadid explained.
