Astrid
Muņoz By Sara Templeton
Astrid
Muņoz is proud to be one of the first Latin models to break
into the big ticket European modeling scene, but more than reaching the
pinnacle of the modeling world, she's happy to be doing what she does.
And at the end of the day, if you can find a job that you
enjoy and that you can be happy about, most other things will fall into
place. Take my humble self for example: I have an
cruisey job that I enjoy, surrounded by great people here at Web
Wombat, and just the other day I came across a half-eaten burrito
someone had dropped in the gutter. Some call it luck, but I think
happiness begets positive encounters. Anyway, when
Astrid was a young girl, growing up in San Juan, which is in Puerto
Rico and where she was born in 1974, it is said that she often dreamt
of being a model. Like many aspiring designers
and models, she read the fashion magazines and took quite a liking to
elaborate clothes the models wore. Not always practical, they were
nevertheless an ever-evolving art form that was always flowing.
As the eldest of three children, she lived in a fairly strict
family and is said to have had many chaperones to keep the evil boys
away, and then at the age of 14, Astrid was offered the chance to began
modeling in Spain. But like all overprotective
parents, her mother stepped in a put an end to that before things went
any further. Mother's can be stern, as most will
attest to, but her father - a nuclear engineer - was also opposed to
the idea. So father's can be stern with their children too. And so,
without any fanfare, Astrid Muņoz resiled herself to a life
of drudgery, attending school and missing out on a potentially amazing
(if innocence destroying) adventure into the world of fashion.
But that wasn't the end of the story, as the photos on this
web page illustrate. The 174cm tall brunette was in Miami at the age of
19 where she was catching up with a friend, when she was approached by
an agent who recommended that she try her hand at modeling.
And before you can say "19 is way too old
to begin a career as a model" she travelled to Paris and after plenty
of hard work and long hours improving her portfolio, Astrid struck the
big time, and success was hers. After spending many
years in Europe, appearing in magazines like Top Model (French and US
editions) and Elle, and doing runway shows for some of the biggest
names in the Northern Hemisphere, she moved to New York, as most top
models do when their bank accounts begin to swell. The
hazel eyed Puerto Rican model with symmetrical facial features has had
contracts with quite a few modeling agencies in her time as a top
model, including Storm in London, Marilyn in Paris, Riccardo Gay in
Milan and the Next modeling agency in New York. And the moral of
Astrid's story? It's not about cloying parents, the loss of innocence
or even chance encounters with enigmatic strangers who profess to be
talent 'scouts'. No, it's all in the genes
ultimately. If you're born aesthetically challenged, you'll probably
never be a model. But you could end up being be a new media desk
monkey. Both are fun.
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