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Unfortunately, after you've gone to school, and you have a résumé and you've done a few jobs, you can't say anything anymore,

so if you say you want to be the President of the United States, but your résumé reads, "Underwear Model: 10 years," people give you a funny look.

The next question is, "Do they retouch all the photos?"

And yeah, they pretty much retouch all the photos, but that is only a small component of what's happening.

This picture is the very first picture that I ever took, and it's also the very first time that I had worn a bikini, and I didn't even have my period yet.

I know we're getting personal, but I was a young girl.

This is what I looked like with my grandma just a few months earlier.

Here's me on the same day as this shoot.

My friend got to come.

Here's me at a slumber party a few days before I shot French Vogue.

Here's me on the soccer team and in V Magazine. And here's me today.

And I hope what you're seeing is that these pictures are not pictures of me.

They are constructions, and they are constructions by a group of professionals,

by hairstylists and makeup artists and photographers and stylists and all of their assistants and pre-production and post-production, and they build this.

That's not me.

Okay, so the next question people always ask me is, "Do you get free stuff?"

I do have too many 8-inch heels which I never get to wear, except for earlier, but the free stuff that I get is the free stuff that I get in real life, and that's what we don't like to talk about.

I grew up in Cambridge, and one time I went into a store and I forgot my money and they gave me the dress for free.

When I was a teenager, I was driving with my friend who was an awful driver and she ran a red and of course, we got pulled over, and all it took was a "Sorry, officer," and we were on our way.

And I got these free things because of how I look, not who I am, and there are people paying a cost for how they look and not who they are.

I live in New York, and last year, of the 140,000 teenagers that were stopped and frisked, 86% of them were black and Latino, and most of them were young men.

And there are only 177,000 young black and Latino men in New York, so for them, it's not a question of, "Will I get stopped?" but "How many times will I get stopped? When will I get stopped?"

When I was researching this talk, I found out that of the 13-year-old girls in the United States, 53% don't like their bodies, and that number goes to 78% by the time that they're 17.

So, the last question people ask me is, "What is it like to be a model?"

And I think the answer that they're looking for is, "If you are a little bit skinnier and you have shinier hair, you will be so happy and fabulous."

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