When Olivia Ponton has something on her mind, she does not keep it to herself. She says it then blasts it on TikTok or Instagram for her 11 million followers.
“It’s not easy,” the 20-year-old Sports Illustrated model told The Post on a recent spring day ahead of Coachella. Ponton can’t reveal if she will follow her 2022 debut when the SI Swim issue hits newsstands Tuesday (although Padma Lakshmi already did reveal she is in it), but she is definitely part of the SI family, as editor of its Instagram channel.
That accolade is because of her own social media clout. In addition to silly dancing videos and makeup tutorials, Ponton posts candid confessions about her coming to terms with her sexuality (she now identifies as “pansexual”), her struggles with eating disorders, and her myriad insecurities.
But she said that it’s important to keep it real for her teen fans, from showing a picture of her happily snuggling with another woman, to filming herself talking about her anxiety.
“I just think about when I was a young girl and thinking, what kind of [role model] did I need at that age?” she added. “I’m working on becoming that.”
Ponton’s frankness has helped her get noticed.
The Florida native has modeled for Fendi, Tory Burch, Juicy Couture, and American Eagle. She flew to Montenegro and donned a bikini for Sports Illustrated and spices up SI Swim’s Instagram as its “social media editor at large.”
Her outspokenness about issues ranging from LGBTQ rights to climate change to sustainability has only made her more attractive for brands looking to appeal to Gen Z.
The Democratic Party tapped her to help urge young people to vote in last year’s midterm elections. And this year, she debuted her first campaign with Victoria’s Secret, a lifelong dream.
“I couldn’t believe it was real,” Ponton said of the VS Pink shoot. “I felt like passing out. I went to the bathroom and was crying because I was so happy.”
Olivia Ponton was born in Naples, Florida, in 2002. “I had a very relaxed childhood,” Ponton said. “We went to the beach all the time.”
Her parents were both teachers, and would take their two daughters to different countries for summer vacations: Hungary, Paris, Germany, and Costa Rica. It made Ponton want to see the world. “I love traveling,” she said.
Ponton ran track and field in school, but at 13 she decided she wanted to be a Victoria’s Secret Angel. “I loved them,” she said of the bodacious lingerie models who were superstars at the time.
“Everyone laughed at me, because I was so short,” about 5 foot 4 inches, she recalled. “Fortunately I had a growth spurt,” the now-5-foot-9 model added.
When Ponton was about 16, her dad took her to Miami during Miami Swim Week. There, she met a real model. She was 6 feet tall and worked as a mannequin full-time. Ponton was enthralled.
When she got back home, she applied for the big modeling agencies and convinced her parents to let her meet with Wilhelmina in New York City in March of 2020. “It took a lot of convincing [for them to sign the contract].” (She’s now at IMG.)
Yet the day after she left the Big Apple, the country shut down due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead of jetting across the world for modeling campaigns, Ponton was stuck at her parents’ house, attending Zoom high school and bored out of her mind.
So she turned to TikTok. She posted workout videos, beach videos, outfit videos, silly videos. All of them showcased her goofy, gregarious personality — and won her a lot of fans.
“I never thought social media and modeling would go together,” Ponton said. “It was just genuinely fun for me.” Now she can’t imagine her career without it.
Ponton has 7.9 million followers on TikTok and 3.2 million on Instagram. Social media has gotten her a stylist, friends and romantic partners, jobs. But such attention also has its downsides.
Online trolls would leave cruel comments on her Instagram posts, criticizing her body in a bikini. They called her too fat or not busty enough or just plain unattractive.
The onslaught of insults led her to hate her body. She did not take much comfort in her modeling jobs either. Though she was booking high-profile gigs, some high fashion samples did not go over her hips.
“I developed an eating disorder,” she said. She stopped eating, thinking that becoming “super skinny” would solve all her problems.
Ponton began talking about her complex relationship with food and her body in public, and to her audience. She also has a therapist. But speaking out about her issues — and connecting with so many other women who struggle with eating disorders — has helped her come to terms with her body.
“I realized that [loving yourself and your body] is a decision you make, that you choose,” she said. “You have to say to yourself, ‘I am beautiful.’”
Last June, Ponton came out as “bisexual” in an interview with Teen Vogue. (She now identifies as pansexual, meaning she’s attracted to a person regardless of their gender.)
It happened when she came across her now-ex-girlfriend’s profile on social media — and couldn’t tell if she just thought she was pretty or was sexually attracted to her. Ponton slid into her DMs, and the two began a relationship.
She didn’t necessarily hide it from her fans — she posted cozy videos of the two of them — but Ponton had trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she could be gay.
“I realize that I had a lot of internalized homophobia,” she said. “I thought, I’m very femme-presenting, I can’t come out, I don’t look like a lesbian! It took me a while to realize that you can look any way [and be gay].”
She said grappling with her sexuality also helped her with her body image issues. “You don’t have to worry about the male gaze,” she says. “I can go out tonight without needing guys to think I’m beautiful.”
That’s what she does. Ponton now splits her time between Los Angeles and the East Village. When she’s not modeling, she said she likes to go out to eat, work out, pick up trash on the beach (she’s involved with 4OCEAN organization), go snorkeling and even paint pottery.
She adds that she’s single, for now.
“I travel so much for work,” she said. “I was tired of constantly getting my heart broken!” And as she would tell her followers, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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