Miranda Kerr: I Can’t Think Straight

The thing about Miranda Kerr is that she’s so visibly aware of being Miranda Kerr. You watch her in interviews and there’s this split-second lag before she remembers to arrange her face the right way—like she’s somewhere else for a moment, then snaps back. She’s been looked at so long that looking away might feel like disappearing. That’s the real exhaustion in it, I think. Not the work of being beautiful (she’s still beautiful; that part seems easy), but the work of managing what that beauty means, knowing exactly how many angles are safe, which charities to endorse, where the boundaries are between authentic and on-brand. The wellness stuff, the wellness guru version of her—that’s not fake, exactly. But you can feel the effort to make it all make sense, to turn a life into a philosophy. Maybe that’s why she comes across as thoughtful but untethered, like she’s solving an equation while living it.