Christie Brinkley has grown to learn to love her body — though that wasn't always the case growing up.
“When I was younger, I was probably my harshest critic,” Brinkley, 70, said while appearing on Todayon Tuesday, May 28. “I think I was trying to live up to what [other people] would think.”
When the model posed for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit in 1975, she admitted she “never felt comfortable on the beach in a bathing suit again.”
“Sports Illustrated makes you look so good,” she continued. “They put you in the best bathing suit. They put you in the best light. You take your very best angle.”
However, the blonde beauty revealed her outlook changed after entering her seventh decade. “When I turned 70, I was like, ‘It’s my life,’” she said.
Brinkley returned to the cover of SI Swimsuit in May alongside other models including Chrissy Teigen, Tyra Banks and more to celebrate the magazine's 60th anniversary.
"Together we are more than the sum of our parts … we are a celebration of every woman, a statement of inclusivity and individuality,” she wrote on Instagram .
“If someone came up to young permed sunburned me during my first photo shoot with the iconic magazine and whispered, ‘they will still be inviting you to be in the picture at 70,’ I would have laughed at them and called them crazy,” she continued. “But now I know that no one wants to become invisible because of our age, (or ethnicity, size, gender, or anything for that matter!) So thank you S.I. … you may just be 60, but you’re very smart for your age!”
While on Today, Brinkley also brought up how she's taking extra care of herself after finding out she had skin cancer earlier this year.
"I was in the room, and he had this little magnifying glass out, and he's looking at a couple of things that she was worried about," Brinkley said. "I thought, 'There is that little spot right on the side of my head right here. ... Should I say anything? It's not my appointment.'"
"Then right at the very end, as he was putting away his little thing, I said, 'Before you put that away, do you think you could just look at this?'" Brinkley recalled asking the doctor. "He looked and he goes, 'We've got to do a biopsy immediately. This is something.' Then the biopsy came back (as) cancer. They took care of it, and luckily, my hair grows in that direction, but the scar is barely noticeable."