8 Rules of Model Behavior (to Help You Take Off on the Runway of Life)
By Heidi Klum With Alexandra Postman
Crown, $27.50.
How to Be a Supermodel
By PENELOPE GREEN
Published: December 5, 2004 ny times
HIS Leno regular, public yodeler and veteran of Victoria's Secret and Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues was once just a small-town girl from Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, who won a modeling contest at 18. Heidi Klum admits that she's now a supermodel, but she also reports that she's heavier and shorter and she grins more than her peers in the business. Plus she's got a bigger bottom (look, there it is on this lush book's back cover, galloping down an alley of evergreens in a tiny black bikini). She would like to share the secrets of her success, which mostly boil down to ambition and a very sound grasp of marketing techniques.
Ms. Klum's No. 1 rule is "You have to want it, baby." No. 2 is "Sell it!"
She's not one to put on airs, especially linguistic ones. "Does it suck," she writes, "to show up at a casting call and find hundreds of girls lined up, all over 5-foot-10, all gorgeous, all trying to get the job you covet?"
You bet.
But Ms. Klum is a gutsy girl. So she hires a publicist, and works on buzzing up her image: on the Letterman show, she yodels for Dave. On a photo shoot with Evander Holyfield for the 2000 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, she decides to bite his ear, hard.
"I think playing against type usually works well," she writes in explanation of that decision. "Or at least it's smart not to do the cliché thing. Boxer = Tough Guy. Model = Sex Kitten. Yawn."
Ms. Klum is media-savvy, but also kind of lovable. Like barber and pizza shop proprietors, she has the endearing habit of liking to have her picture taken with the celebrities she meets (and she shares those with her readers). Backstage before an appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno", Prince asks his people to ask her people if they might meet. She's thrilled, he's painfully shy, and when she asks for her usual picture, he balks.
"I don't believe in photographs," he tells her. "When I take a picture it's like something has been taken away from me." Okaaay, Ms. Klum writes.
She also asks her famous friends to share their own success secrets. Spoilsport Prince hasn't shared, but Bono has:
"The world is more malleable than you think," Mr. U2 says. "It is not all set in concrete and where it is, at least stick your fingers in before it dries."
And Tyra Banks says, "Wear control-top stockings when you wear white so they can't see the cellulite on your booty."
These sound principles, and Ms. Klum's grandmother's recipe for sauerkraut soup (which calls for an entire 12-ounce bottle of Heinz ketchup), are surely worth $27.50.