Yolanda Hadid: I didn’t want Gigi and Bella judged as models before 18

Yolanda Hadid has said she wanted her daughters Gigi and Bella to wait until they are 18 to become models because she did not want them to be judged in their younger years.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star said that Gigi later thanked her for making her hold back because she would have struggled with her success at the age of 16.

Hadid, 54, told the Press Association that it was her “philosophy” to encourage her daughters to wait to become models until they were adults.

She said: “I didn’t want them being judged during the most empowering, important time of a young woman’s life – when you start your period, you get your boobies, it’s a very… changing time in our life, that you need to be left alone.

“Make or break, you have to experience life because if you’re not given those life experiences, you don’t have anything to give when you’re in front of the camera.

“It’s all about the perspective, it’s all about the pulling from life experiences, and if you haven’t had any life experience you don’t have anything to give.”

Hadid said she was “very rigid” about them not starting before the age of 18, although she said that Gigi did press her on that sometimes.

Gigi, 22, and Bella, 21, have enjoyed successful careers as models in recent years, and they both currently appear on the front cover of British Vogue magazine.

Hadid, who previously worked as a model before becoming a reality TV star, is now hosting her own TV series Making A Model, in which she coaches aspiring teen models to succeed on and off the catwalk.

“Every young teenager has the dream to be a model, but yet they don’t really understand, they have no realistic expectations, of what it is the business is or what it is they have to bring to the table, because they’re still so young.

“It’s a great story, because I want 14-year-olds to go ‘oh yeah, I want to be a model and I want to be on the cover of Vogue and I want to be a Victoria’s Secret Angel’, yet you’re living off of a dream everyday which might not be realistic.”

– Making A Model with Yolanda Hadid airs on Lifetime at 9pm, Thursday February 8