Paulina Porizkova, model, writer and advocate for embracing aging, is a Woman of the Year honoree

Paulina Porizkova is one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country. Meet this year’s honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.

Paulina Porizkova won't take "no" for an answer.

The will to fight onward is one inherently ingrained in Porizkova, whose career as a top model since the '80s has recently given way to a new era, one where she's an author and an advocate for embracing aging in an industry that puts youth at a premium. She won't accept the stigmas placed on getting older.

"When I was a young woman, I didn't think much of aging. I thought of aging as something that happens to other people. And I thought by the time I was that older woman, somehow I would not have the same kind of interest in life as I did as a younger woman," says Porizkova, 58. "Being in this second part of life now and knowing what age is and what age brings, it's such a tremendous time."

As a model, Porizkova has been on the cover of every major magazine and fronted campaigns for Estée Lauder, Chanel, Hermes and more. After a turbulent few years, including her public separation from and then the death of husband Ric Ocasek in 2019, she is lending her face to a different cause. Now, Porizkova, whose 2022 book aptly sums up this stage of her life with its title "No Filter: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful," encourages others to celebrate getting older.

"Life will only get better as long as you're not afraid of it," she says. "This is a fantastic place to be. Don't waste time trying to be younger. Embrace who you are right now because you are at your very best right now. It's not going to get any better than this, so enjoy it while it lasts."

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Who paved the way for you?

The women that paved the way for me would have to be pretty much every single model that modeled before I did. Because it's an unusual career, obviously, and as far as I know, the early era of modeling was really more socialites and movie stars. And then it got into professional modeling in the '50s and the '60s. And those women, that's what made the work be the work that it became.

Of course, like everyone else, I stand on the shoulders of everybody that was before me. That's a lot of women, and I'm very grateful to all of them for having made it possible for me to have the career that I've had.

What is your proudest moment?

In my modeling career, it was when I happened to see a movie called "Paris Is Burning," about the underground movement of transgender young people in New York City. And there was a young woman named Octavia who they did a little interview with. And she's sitting in front of a bed, not (in) a fancy room, and the whole wall behind her is filled with tear sheets from magazines. And there's a picture of me in there, and she starts talking about me and she's telling the camera how she takes inspiration from looking at my pictures.  And when I think of that moment, it still almost brings me to tears that my job – that I just thought of as selling you a lipstick – could inspire a young woman that was really battling with who she was and who she wanted to be and being accepted by society. And that I allowed for her to dream. That's the first time I became aware that I was also selling dreams and that maybe in some way it had value.

I was incredibly proud of having written a book in three months. Didn't know that could be done and didn't know that I could do it.

You're actually meeting me in my proudest moment, which is having arrived at where I am after having gone through some catastrophic changes and some dark times, having to rebuild myself from pretty much nothing. And yet here I stand, and I'm probably happier than ever. I know I'm a better person than I've ever been. I'm certainly a smarter person than I've ever been. And that I was able to rebuild this house that is me, that was completely shattered into smithereens, and I was able to rebuild it better – that I'm proud of. 

Is there a guiding principle or mantra you tell yourself? 

In my late 40s, my marriage (to Ric Ocasek) started falling apart. I didn't know how to fix this and maybe it couldn't be fixed. Giving up is very hard for me to do, I don't like to give up, but I had to because there was no other choice. And then a series of events: My husband died; there was a question of an interestingly shaped will after his death that felt very much like a betrayal to me of the life that I had spent with him; a number of other hardships; COVID; not having money and having to sell my house. All sorts of things that taken alone, they're hard to deal with, but when you get dealt an entire sequence of them, it's like being in stormy water and you just never really get to poke your head up to gasp for air because there is no air to be had. You're just constantly bombarded with waves. 

I read literally every book on the market about grief and heartbreak and betrayal. And some of them repeated this one thing that kept touching my heart: Nothing lasts. It's as simple as that: Nothing lasts, bad times don't last, and so you can take comfort in that when you're going through a really hard time, just remember, it won't last forever. And when you're going through good times, you know it won't last, so be grateful for the moment. To me, that has been life-changing. 

What advice would you give your younger self? 

I know that giving myself advice when I was 18 is a bad idea, because I would've never taken any older woman's advice. I didn't take anybody's advice at 18. I thought I knew it all. So I wouldn't give myself any advice. Just like, "Hey, you know what? School of hard knocks, you'll figure it out."  When you dispense advice, you do so with the best intentions that you know something this other person doesn't know, and you want to share your wisdom with them. And the fact is, we all have to acquire our wisdom at our own time, and nobody can give you that.

You've experienced a difficult few years recently. How do you work to overcome adversity?

We never really know how we're going to react when presented with adversity, right? Real adversity is something that you have never encountered before, and so therefore you don't quite know how to deal with it. And I think you usually try all the ways that you're used to.

We are all capable of change (and) leaving yourself open to the possibility that things will change. I know this firsthand, good or bad, you can be having a great day and it can go south like that. You can have a (tough) day and things will look up when you least expect it. So knowing that gives you hope. And hope is the most important thing that we have as human beings. Because if hope dies, you die. As long as there is hope, even the smallest glimmer of hope that tomorrow maybe you'll wake up and the day will be a little easier. Then you keep going.

Who do you look up to?

The person that has inspired me the most is my mother. If you don't know the story of my childhood, this sounds like a very nice compliment, like, "Oh, how wonderful. She's inspired by her mother," but my mother and I have had an incredibly complicated relationship. She left me when I was a small child, not because she wanted to, but that's the way things worked out. We weren't quite mother and child, we never really learned the same love language, we were never together long enough. It's been a very fraught relationship. And yet here I am, I'm 58, and I think my mom's going to be 77, and I look at her and I think out of all the people in the world, it is my mother that has inspired me the most.

My mother is an incredibly courageous woman. She has never taken "no" for an answer. We can't resist a challenge. My mother at the age of 72, went to the Peace Corps and did two years of teaching midwifery in Uganda. She came back with her then-boyfriend and had the most magnificent wedding at the age of 74 on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. They travel the world together. They see the world together. She is such an inspiration to me of what is possible for a woman that doesn't take "no" for an answer, a woman that doesn't see a closed door as anything but something you take an ax to. Maybe it wasn't the easiest thing to be her daughter, but as a woman, that's who I'd like to be. When I see her at her age now with her husband being delightfully happy, seeing the world and just having a great time, I think that's who I want to be. That's what I want to do. 

What is your definition of courage?

Courage to me is not the absence of fear, but rather the presence of fear and doing things in spite of the fear. I think this is a very important distinction. When people call someone fearless or whether they've called me fearless, I always go, "Uh-uh, no, I am full of fears. In fact, I'm wracked with fears on a daily basis from going into the subway to elevators. I'm filled with fears." But I won't let them stop me. I just don't like being presented with a challenge that I won't at least try to win.