How Olivia Culpo's Wellness Philosophy Is Helping Her Cope with Endometriosis — and Quarantine
She may be known for cutting a fierce figure in a swimsuit, but the model, actor, designer, and fashion influencer is just as commanding in a power suit. Here, she opens up about taking charge of her life goals, owning her health, and finding pure happiness in a glass of champagne.
If this were one of those 20-things-you-don’t-know lists about Olivia Culpo, we might try these for starters: Growing up in Rhode Island, she spent most of her summers at band camp (yes, band camp — and she’s got mad skills on the cello to prove it); she got certified in Transcendental Meditation at age 18 (more on that later); and she worked through the early days of the pandemic to launch her face mask line out of the New York home of a seamstress when factories everywhere ground to a halt.
“I felt helpless, which is why I started More Than a Mask,” Olivia says of her fashion-forward charity collection, which benefits Feeding America. “That was what I did to find a purpose and to cope.” She would spend a long stretch of lockdown — “93 days, which was nuts” — at the Colorado family home of her boyfriend, Christian McCaffrey, a running back for the Carolina Panthers. As summer was just wrapping up in late September, Olivia was home at last, making pizza with her roommate, younger sister Sophia, in Encino, California, where outside the skies were subsiding to “this yellow tint” from their previous wildfire orange. “The sky is becoming more blue as each day passes,” she says wistfully, as if willing a forecast about the future at large.
It would be easy to see this Miss Universe turned actor and swimsuit cover model with the football-star boyfriend as leading a charmed life, but then you’d miss how hardworking she has been throughout her career. Olivia has steadily built a TV and film résumé, with three credits this year alone: starring roles in movies The Swing of Things and Venus as a Boy and a part in the series Paradise City, in which you can witness her virtuoso cello playing. And at 28, she’s on her fourth fashion line; the latest, for Macy’s, called Culpos X Inc., is a joint project with Sophia and older sister Aurora. “Every collaboration is filled with pieces that are interchangeable for dressing up or dressing down and staples that people will continue to go back to,” says Olivia, who was intent on making the line affordable. “I’m the middle child of five. When one person grew out of something, the next one got it.”
Yes, her Instagram feed is replete with paradisiacal beach shots, Willy Wonka cakes she bakes from scratch, and her quarantine-acquisition puppy — a toy goldendoodle named Oliver Sprinkles. But there are also gravitas moments, like a recent post revealing that she suffers from endometriosis, a painful condition in which endometrial tissue grows outside the uterus. “It was a really frustrating experience, which is one reason I’m so passionate about talking about it,” says Olivia. She shares her hard-won path to wellness plus how she’s mastered the trick of seizing the day even when time feels so warped.
Be the Hero of Your Health
“About a year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, but I knew there was some- thing wrong before that. I had gone to a number of doctors in agony — crying, shaking. When you’re living with chronic pain, you don’t know if you want to throw up or just curl into a ball and cry. That’s when I started a six-month journey of trying to figure it out. ‘OK, what is going on here?’ I finally went to a doctor who was able to diagnose me. Good thing, because my condition was advanced, and she needed to check my eggs immediately to make sure my fertility was intact.
Right now, I’m trying to figure out new ways to heal holistically through what I’m eating and the rest that I’m giving myself. I’m also exploring acupuncture, massages, Chinese herbal medicine, and maybe cutting out caffeine. I’m going to actively try to help people who live with this and not just talk about my experience. ”
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