Getty Danica McKellar attends the 2019 Winter TCA Tour.
Danica McKellar recently revealed why she decided to pose in lingerie for Maxim, a men’s magazine, 10 years ago. The decision may seem surprising for the woman who’s now one of the top stars on The Hallmark Channel, but she said that she had a clear reason for her decision.
McKellar Said She Wanted to Empower Women to Embrace Their Bodies No Matter Their Age
In 2005, McKellar posed for a lingerie photo spread in Stuff magazine, a spinoff magazine to Maxim, Fox News reported. Stuff magazine launched in 1999 and then shut down in 2007. McKellar did the photoshoot after readers had voted her the star they most wanted to see in lingerie.
In 2010, posed for another lingerie photoshoot, this time for Maxim magazine.
In a recent interview with Forbes, McKellar revealed the thought process behind her decisions. She said she did the photoshoots because she wanted to reveal to the world that women can still look great in their 30s and help empower women. Her original plan was to do a photoshoot every year, but she eventually changed her mind.
At 30, I was going to show the world that you don’t have to be in your 20’s to look great. But, as I got older, my past ages seemed younger and younger. Do you know what I mean? When you’re 18, 30 is old. But when you’re 30, it’s not really. When you’re 40, it’s, ‘Yeah, I was young at 30.’ My original plan was to pose every five years, but then I lost interest.
McKellar, who’s 45, said she doesn’t have to do lingerie shoots anymore to show people that you can look great at any age.
Now there’s Instagram. I can just post a workout video if people want to see if I’m fit at 45. It’s a lot easier than setting up a frickin’ photo shoot! To answer your question, I did the shoots to empower women to embrace their bodies and not to think that they’re over the hill, or whatever. That was really my goal.
In an interview with Fox News in 2010, McKellar said she understood that some people were unhappy with her choice, since at the time she was best known for her role as Winnie on The Wonder Years.
“I’ve had women and parents email me asking if I should really be doing that, since I’m still considered a role model,” she said shortly after the photospread had published.
She Gave Birth to Her Son the Same Year as the Photoshoot
GettyActress Danica McKellar and her son Draco Verta in 2015.
McKellar was married in 2009 to Michael Verta and got pregnant shortly after. Her child, Draco, was born in 2010, not long after the photoshoot was published.
She told Fox News in 2010 while she was pregnant: “We’re not sure if it’s a boy or girl, we’re going to find out. We would like to have two though, one of each… but, whatever we are supposed to have is what we’ll have… [I’m doing] work out videos! I’m five months [pregnant], and I don’t know my body anymore, but I’m still working out.”
In 2012, McKellar and Verta divorced. She and Scott Sveslosky, her current husband, got engaged in 2014. They married in Hawaii later in 2014. McKellar told Country Living that when she and Sveslosky first met after talking on the phone several times, it was love at first sight for her.
“We’d been talking on the phone for a little bit and my favorite book is The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra,” she said. “And he’d brought it with him and underlined his favorite parts. I just already loved him and was smitten from the moment I sat down.”
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