DV Expose: Models Make Too Much Money

FACT: Pretty women make more money than you or anyone you will ever know 

It’s not that we don’t think they shouldn’t be compensated for their work – they should – but looking attractive and possessing the ability to walk in a straight line should net, at most, a hundred thousand dollars in monetary reward.

But how much are these women making? Well, let’s look at the top five highest-earning models on the planet: 

5. Alessandra Ambrosio: $6 million

4. Adriana Lima: $6 million

3. Heidi Klum: $8 million

2. Kate Moss: $9 million

1. Gisele Bundchen: $33 million 

Even ignoring the insane jump in cash between #2 and #1, just think about this: for the natural-born gift of looking attractive, a small degree of business savvy (more on that later), and the coordination necessary to look good walking in high heels, these women make more money in a year than most anyone reading this site will even see for the rest of their natural lives.

FACT: This list makes no sense  

This might be easier to handle were it not for the fact that the amount of money earned and the hotness of the model seem to be inversely proportional. Kate Moss, a skinny crackhead who has been in trouble with the law over and over, somehow landed the number two spot?  

Gisele Bundchen, while admittedly pretty attractive, somehow commands over five times as much as Alessandra Ambrosio or Adriana Lima?  

All things being fair, please compare this 

To this 

And tell us which face should be worth more money. Individual opinion will, of course, vary, but would you say that Gisele Bundchen is honestly five times hotter than Alessandra Ambrosio? Because their paychecks certainly seem to think so.

Were this list flipped upside down, it might make more sense – as it stands, this top five is more confusing than a David Lynch movie marathon broadcast in Esperanto. And beyond that, just stop to think: 

FACT: $33 million is a lot of goddamn money 

With $33 million dollars you could: 

-Make a decently-budgeted feature film

Most independent filmmakers would kill their friends, families, and mentors for a thirty million dollar budget. Gisele Bundchen gets the amount of money necessary to make a great comedy/drama/action/horror/zombie/porn film every single year. Want to self-finance your own sequel to Serenity? Go ahead. Want to shoot a slacker comedy epic? Knock yourself out. Feel like bankrolling the next Queen Latifah/Steve Martin laugh-fest? You can, but we wouldn’t recommend it – to do so would be akin to sending a donation to the American Nazi Party. 

-Finance the Iraq War for five and a half hours

Really puts things in perspective, huh? Even if the top five highest-earning models in the world collectively pooled their dough to help fund the Iraq War effort, when all was said and done, they would have officially helped our soldiers out for no more than ten hours.  

-Pay for 4,710 ASU students’ annual tuitions

At around $7,000 a year, Arizona State University’s relatively low tuition costs mean that a hypothetical rich benefactor could help a hefty number of teenagers who would otherwise be without the financial means to attain a post-secondary education. The tradeoff for free tuition at Arizona State University is the unfortunate, unavoidable fact that they would still have to go to Arizona State University. 

-Buy 28,285,714 rubber ducks

You obviously wouldn’t want to buy this large a quantity of something this useless, but the fact that one could is oddly comforting. 

-4,125,000 bottles of K-Y Jelly and 38,823,529 spermicidal condoms

Because when you’ve got an eight digit income, women will flock to you like… 

…There’s really no better metaphor that can replace “like women flocking to a guy with money,” so we’ll just stick with that. With $33 million a year, women would flock to you like women flock to a guy with money. Entering or exiting your house would be rendered nigh-impossible by the veritable armies of gold-digging, would-be trophy wives, and while this increase in female interest might wreak havoc on your senses of safety and interpersonal trust, there is one beautifully obvious upside: sex. Lots and lots and lots of sex.  

If there’s one thing that gold diggers are good at, it is exploiting the male desire to frequently copulate. That said, why not indulge them? Spending the lump sum of $33 million on sexual accessories in one sitting would probably be problematic for several reasons, but it is important to know your hypothetical limits: ideally, one would spend 16.5 million bucks on condoms and lube, and keep the other 16.5 million around purely for its aesthetic qualities. Women will not flock to a man without money, but that man had better be damn well prepared for a great deal of rough, pleasurable, but potentially disease-ridden intercourse.  

We would also suggest hiring several bodyguards, with which to dispose of the gold-diggers after the dirty deed has been completed and the women realize that you aren’t really into the whole “marriage” thing. 

-660,000 bottles of Grey Goose vodka

Just in case a little extra oomph is necessary to get some mileage out of the K-Y and condoms.  

Fact: Gisele Bundchen literally quit Victoria’s Secret because – wait for it – the money wasn’t good enough. 

Five million dollars a year to wear underwear.  

Five.  

Million. 

Dollars. 

A year. 

And it wasn’t enough. 

God bless the girl for knowing that she could make more, but my God: just because she was lucky enough to be born with pleasant features and a near-anorexic lack of body fat, a skinny Brasilian girl somehow found herself in a position where she could look at a five million dollar paycheck, shrug, and say, “Nah, not enough.”  

As a reminder, the average teacher, who still only makes about $45,000 a year – and all things considered, they probably spend more time on their feet than Misses Ambrosio, Bundchen, or Moss. 

There are many, many professions in the world whose work/reward ratio is grossly unbalanced: professional athletes, oil tycoons, etcetera. Perhaps it might seem unfair that we pick so specifically on supermodels, but it’s hard not to: when all is said and done, these women were born with the attributes that make them successful in their chosen occupation. If there were a job where the only criteria was limitless anger and the ability to grow a beard, I’d sign up for it immediately – but as it stands, I, and all the other average Joes whose yearly income doesn’t exceed six digits, must envy and despise those women who get paid to be pretty.