Oprah Winfrey Made Cindy Crawford Show Off Her Body on Camera: 'I Was like a Chattel'

• Oprah Winfrey made Cindy Crawford feel she should "be seen and not heard."
• Crawford's daughter had a simple request for her parents when she took to the runway.

In a new docu-series, Cindy Crawford reflected on a moment early in her career when she was severely objectified. At 20, she was featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" with her Elite Modeling Agency representation, John Casablancas.

The clip of the segment in question was still available on Oprah Winfrey's YouTube channel earlier this week but has since been removed. In much of the interview Oprah Winfrey did not direct questions at the model.

"Did she always have this body? Stand up just a moment, now this is what I call a body," Winfrey exclaimed, emphasizing the second 'body,' after introducing the young model. Crawford complied. The model said in the Apple+ show "The Super Models:"

"I was like the chattel or a child, be seen and not heard. When you look at it through today's eyes, Oprah's like, 'Stand up and show me your body. Show us why you're worthy of being here.'"

The former talk show host has yet to comment on being called out in retrospect. Casablancas predicted elsewhere in the clip that Crawford could "be number one in the business" if she wanted to.

"The Super Models," released on Wednesday, looks at the careers of Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington over four episodes. The four women also served as executive producers on the project.

In another candid moment in the documentary, Crawford admits that she would often pass out from the huger, particularly before lunch. "And then they would prop you back up, and you would do it all over again," she remembered.

Cindy Crawford on Some of Her Career Firsts

"My dad really didn't understand that modeling was a real career," Campbell said elsewhere in the documentary. "He thought modeling was like another name for prostitution. So they came with me to my very first modeling appointment."

At 16, Crawford was photographed in a bikini for a local college newspaper. The photographer encouraged her to get an agent in Chicago. The teen's first job was for a bra ad for the Midwest department store Marshall Fields.

She dropped out of college at 20 to become a model full-time. Her early work in the Windy City was in catalogs. In a 2019 NET-A-PORTER video, she recounted one of her first runway shows for Diane von Furstenberg in New York:

"The reason I remember it is because I did not like the dress I was wearing, and it is so hard to get down a runway when you don't feel good in what you are wearing."

Her daughter Kaia Gerber has also become a promising model. The first time Crawford saw her walk was during her debut show season for Marc Jacobs in New York.

Though Cindy Crawford would have liked to support her daughter at every show from the front row, the new model only allowed her parents to attend one show in each market.