Supermodel Cameron Russell Wants to be a Ninja Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon Poet When She Grows Up

Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model.

That's the takeaway message from Columbia University-educated supermodel Cameron Russell's recent TEDxMid-Atlantic talk called Image is Powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re53vgaVFvI

Russell has been a professional model for about 10 years, including for such top-tier brands as Ralph Lauren and Victoria's Secret. But there's more to her than meets the eye. And that's exactly what her 10-minute TED talk was about.

Her talk starts with her, obviously beautiful, walking out on stage in a short, skintight black dress. But she immediately and unexpectedly makes a number of self-deprecating comments about her appearance, and how it may be making some people in the audience uncomfortable. (In case you're not familiar with TED conferences, Russell doesn't look like a typical TED speaker.)

"I should not have worn this dress. Luckily, I've brought an outfit change," she says. And then the feeling in the room gets a little uncomfortable as the audience watches her first tie a patterned wrap-skirt around her waist, then change from high-heels to flats, and then finally put on a black sweater.

"Image is powerful, but also, image is superficial. I just transformed what you think of me in six seconds."

She makes her point well. Image is amazingly powerful, whether you're a Gen Y thinking about what to wear on a job interview, a startup CEO pitching to an investor, a public school teacher, a mid-level corporate executive, the President of the United States. What you look like affects how people think about you.

What's interesting about this, as she points out so clearly, is that you have very little control over it. It's a genetic lottery. How do you become a model? people ask her constantly. Well, she typically says, I won a lottery and (unfairly) inherited a legacy; a legacy that society currently considers "pretty girls" to be tall, slender, and white.

She has some other points about looks, image, and life in her talk and it's well worth 10 minutes of your time to watch. Perhaps the very most interesting is her honest deconstruction of photos of her in magazines and photos of her taken the same week or even the same day side-by-side -- they are drastically different. She says, "These pictures are not pictures of me, they are constructions. And they are constructions by professionals and makeup artists and hair stylists and all of their assistants and pre-production and post-production and they build this. That's not me."

But more germane to this blog, Russell has some interesting career advice for young people, particularly young women.

Russell often asks young women what they want to be when they grow up. Of course, there is no wrong answer to this question. A lot of them say, "a model." Unfortunately, being a model is largely out of one's control, largely determined by genetic lottery and a legacy.

She says, "Saying you want to be a model when you grow up is akin to saying your want to win the Powerball when you grow up. It's out of your control and it's awesome and it's not a career path."

Russell doesn't exactly give a recipe for finding that career path, nor does she have time to in this particular talk. But she clearly encourages young people to dream big and consider being "Ninja Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon Poets" while they're still young. Because once you go too far down a career path, it can be much harder to change paths. She bluntly makes the below point in a way that only her and 300 others could:

When I grow up, I want to be: President of the United States

Current resume: 10 years, underwear model

At the end of her TED talk, Russell says, "If there's a takeaway to this talk I hope that it's that we all feel more comfortable acknowledging the power of image in our perceived successes and our perceived failures." What I think I take away from this is that while you can't do much to change how people perceive you based on what you look like, you also shouldn't sweep the fact that how people perceive you is very important under the proverbial rug. We all have to deal with our own image, and our own perceptions of others'.

For her part, Cameron Russell, age 25 years and 7 months (that means she's been modeling since she was 15, by the way), isn't merely a model. Besides adding "TED talk" to her resume, she directs a project called The Big Bad Lab, which brings together artists, technologists, and strangers to create and collaborate in public space, and blogs at ArtRoots, a website about art and culture.

In an era where everyone -- even supermodels -- needs to be entrepreneurial to make their mark, I think we can all look forward to seeing where Cameron Russell's interests and talents take her.