She’s a real role model
Supermodel Christy Turlington Burns has gone superwoman on us.
Fueled by her interest in charity work, exotic travel and her own two children, she’s getting a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and directing a documentary on the risks and successes of maternal health around the world.
Still sought after by the fashion world at age 40, Turlington Burns says her focus shifted after the death of her father 12 years ago.
“It was an organic progression,” she explains.
She had been a teenage smoker. Her dad was diagnosed with cancer and died within six months; it took her five years to fully quit.
“I wanted to share my story, his story. I approached the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the American Lung Association. I volunteered my services in any capacity,” Turlington Burns says.
At first, they weren’t sure what to do with her. Then she filmed an emotional, black-and-white public service announcement – and co-produced more of those with MTV.
She targeted adolescent girls because that was the story she knew best.
“I thought, ‘This is what I’m meant to do,’ ” she says.
That led to public speaking and development of a Web site, SmokingIsUgly.com.
At age 26, she decided to complete her undergraduate degree in comparative religion and Eastern philosophy at New York University. Then came two fashion-related businesses and marriage to actor Ed Burns.
Yoga has been one of the constants in her life, even in her days as one-third of the “The Trinity” with fellow models Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista.
And service, Turlington Burns explains, is one of the main tenets of yoga.
She asked herself, “Where can I make the biggest difference?” and her thoughts went to the connection she felt to women, and especially mothers, wherever she went.
There were some complications during her own natural childbirth of daughter Grace, now 5. But when mother and daughter were so well cared for at top-notch facilities in New York, Turlington Burns started to think about what could have happened had they been elsewhere.
She started taking trips with the humanitarian organization CARE to Central and South America, and to Africa on behalf of (RED), an anti-HIV/AIDS initiative founded by her friends Bono and Bobby Shriver.
“I don’t see this as being something I’ll be involved with for a short time. I’m a mother forever – and I have a daughter – and I want to do it for her and her generation,” Turlington Burns says.
When she comes home from her worldwide travels and looks at her own fortunate kids, she sees traces of the children stuck in such hard struggles. It tugs at her heart, of course, but it’s not all sadness.
“You also see there is always joy in children,” she says. “Kids everywhere are still playing. They’re still kids in whatever environment you find them in – and that’s hopeful.”
The birthday bunch
Comedian Mort Sahl is 82. Singer Eric Burdon (The Animals, War) is 68. Former MTV VJ Martha Quinn is 50. Actor Coby Bell (“Third Watch”) is 34. Actor Jonathan Jackson (“Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,” “Tuck Everlasting”) is 27.