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Gisele Bundchen might just be the most famous wife in all of sports. She is married to Tom Brady, a guy who is undoubtedly one of the best quarterbacks of all time. Nevertheless, while most sports fans might think that Brady is the real catch in that marriage, they would be dearly wrong. As a matter of fact, despite the assurance that Tom Brady is one of the richest football players of all time and, as we mentioned before, is one of the greatest players of all time, his wife outshines him in almost every single aspect of fame.

Brady has a huge salary, but still, Gisele is the one who makes the most money in that household. Brady’s famous worldwide, but still, Gisele is the one with most followers in almost every single social media platform. None of that is to Brady’s detriment. It all just speaks to the greatness of this Brazilian supermodel. She is one of the biggest examples of how, despite the many hurdles they face, women can become ridiculously successful if they work hard and know how to promote themselves.

Gisele is a sweetheart who deserves every single penny she has earned throughout her amazing career as a model. Nevertheless, even sweethearts like her have things they don’t want us to know about or things they want us to forget. Thankfully, we are here to show you the good and the bad when it comes to Gisele Bundchen. So, get ready because here are eight things Gisele wants you to know and seven she wants you to forget.

Know: Charity

Gisele’s net worth is something out of this world. But unlike many wealthy people, she does, from time to time, use her star power and money to help charitable organizations. For example, not too long ago, she donated $150,000 for Brazil’s zero hunger program, which helped a lot of starving people in her motherland.

When disaster struck Haiti back in 2010, the supermodel did not waste time and donated $1.5 million to the Red Cross to aid in the relief effort. She sent similar donations when natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis affected countries in Asia, not to mention her donations to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Not only with money, Gisele also used her status as a celebrity to help raise funds for charities. The best example of that was when she designed an exclusive line of necklaces that were sold to raise money and support for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Forget: The Breastfeeding Scandal

Breastfeeding is one of the most natural things for any human being. So, we could hardly imagine how a scandal could break out from comments about this most natural of human functions. Well, in 2010, Gisele found out that there is a way to get yourself into controversy talking about this topic. Gisele was new to motherhood, as she and Brady had just welcomed their first son in 2009, and like many new mothers, she was passionate about the aspects of early motherhood.

In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar magazine, the supermodel portrayed that passion as she criticized mothers who gave bottled milk to their babies instead of breastfeeding them. Gisele’s words were, “There should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.”

As one would imagine, her comment did not go so well with the crowd of mothers who, for medical or psychological reasons, cannot breastfeed their children. In the end, she had to issue an apology before things got out of hand.

Know: Big And Small Screen Success

She might have only dipped her toes into the world of acting, but in the few movies and TV series that Gisele starred in, she was more successful and has acted better than many people thought she would.

There are a lot of folks who hated her acting debut in the movie Taxi when she played the role of Vanessa, a model who went into the business of bank robbing. And yet, there were those people who loved her in that movie. Believe it or not, she was nominated for two awards because of that acting gig. One of them was the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Villain and the other was the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Breakout Performance-Female. She won neither of those awards, but to be nominated just shows that she did something right.

Her other big-screen appearances were in the 2006 flick, The Devil Wears Prada, and the 2008 documentary, Coração Vagabundo.

Forget: Pedal To The Metal

For someone who seemed so concerned and passionate about being a mother, something Gisele did in 2014 went totally against the picture she painted. Come on, if someone complains about other women feeding their babies from bottles instead of breastfeeding them, we have to assume that this person is nothing less than the paramount of exemplary mothers.

Well, we could make that case for Gisele until she was caught riding a four-wheeler in Costa Rica while carrying her baby daughter. No, there were no seat belts or any kind of safety measures involved. All there was in the picture was Gisele riding an ATV and steering with one hand while holding her daughter, Vivian, with her other hand. Oh yeah, neither of them were wearing helmets.

Perhaps she was riding slowly, and there was no real danger of baby Vivian falling off, but still, if you want to be looked at as an example for other mothers, this is the kind of stuff you shouldn’t be doing.

Know: Instagram Greatness

Social media has become a cornerstone of modern society. The amount of success you have and, subsequently, the amount of money you can earn on the Internet are inherently linked to the amount of people who follow you across the many spectra of social media. If we are to take those assumptions as true, there are hardly many people who can hold a candle to Gisele when it comes to her following.

This 37-year-old beauty has tallied over 12.9 million followers on Instagram alone. Let’s put this in perspective: Gisele has more followers than Belgium, Greece, Portugal, and Sweden have in population. How ridiculous is that?

In comparison to Tom Brady, she is milestones ahead of her husband. While still respectful, Brady’s 2.6 million followers pale in comparison to the amount of people who follow his wife.

Facebook and Twitter are also platforms where Gisele excels, as her Facebook page has over 6 million likes, and her Twitter account has over 4.7 million followers.

Forget: Problem At Home In Brazil

While most of the controversies involving Gisele Bundchen were worldwide news and had major repercussions all over the globe, there was one particular incident where she got some serious heat at home in Brazil.

Back in 2011, Gisele starred in a series of lingerie ads for the brand Hope. In the ads, Gisele was pictured as telling her boyfriend or husband that she had just crashed his car. It was separated into two parts—first, when she told the bad news in regular clothes and second, she was in lingerie.

The problem was that the Brazilian department for policies for women deemed the ad as offensive and sexist and took action for it to be banned. From there, the whole thing blew up. Gisele was criticized for taking part in an ad that her critics said was not even that funny and appealed to the sense that in order for women to get anything, they would have to undress to a point.

Know: Save The Environment

We talked about Gisele’s generosity towards people who are less fortunate than her and those who need aid in the wake of natural disasters. But those are not the only ones who receive support from the supermodel. As someone who hails from a country proud of its greenery and natural beauty, Gisele is a person who seems deeply concerned about the challenges of environmental conservation.

In that spectrum, she has done a lot in terms of bringing awareness to such an important issue of our time. She started slow, with a blog in 2008, but quickly picked up speed on her environmental work as a year later, she co-hosted an annual gala that honors leaders in sustainability.

Still, in 2008, she appeared on the cover of American Photo magazine promoting her reforestation project, Forests of the Future. And in 2011, she was recognized by one of the world’s most famous universities as she was named Harvard’s 2011 Global Environmental Citizen.

Forget: Not So Green

We have detailed Gisele’s efforts in aiding environmental conservation throughout the years. But while she started getting big on the issue later in her career, back in 2002, she was on a different side of this fight. As a matter fact, she was hit hard by PETA in an act we could never imagine happening to today’s Gisele.

Sometime before the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in New York, Gisele received £320,000 and a pair of black mink coats as payment to become the face of a Blackglama advertising campaign. Blackglama is one of the most famous fur companies in the world. But, if you are someone concerned with environmental conservation, they are nothing more than one of the most notorious companies in the world. And that is how PETA protesters felt when they stormed the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and targeted Gisele.

As one PETA representative at the time said, “By getting into bed with the fur-pushers, Gisele has become PETA enemy number one.”

Know: The Discovery

This is more of a fun fact than anything else. It also is an excellent example of how your life can change in the most unusual places. Where do you think the highest-paid supermodel in the world was discovered? In a magazine? In a small town beauty pageant? No, Gisele Bundchen was discovered at a McDonald’s.

Gisele was only 13 years old when she signed up for a modeling course, not because of the prospect of becoming a model, but because she wanted to visit a big city.

In her eyes, the greatest perk of taking that course was that at the end of the course, they would get to go to São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. So she signed up for the class and went on the trip she dreamed about. That’s when, while she was eating her first meal at a McDonald’s in the big city, one modeling agent picked her out of the 55 other girls who were part of the course.

Forget: More On Babies

Seriously, we could make a whole documentary series on the amount of controversies involving Gisele Bundchen and motherhood. If the breastfeeding scandal was not enough, Gisele went out of her way in 2012 to make some more noise. In a blogpost on her website, the supermodel decided to tell the world that she thought hospital births were violent to both mothers and babies.

“Most people are unaware what a birth without violence is like and its benefits to mother, baby, family, and society,” the post said. “Many hospitals are like a mass production of babies, where routines are followed and the baby must be born as soon as possible.”

And while those comments might have merely expressed her opinion, like we will have to mention again later on this piece, when someone with as much star power as Gisele says something like this, people tend to listen and believe. Again, several specialists slammed her for the comments.

Know: Her Skincare Line

For many people, the purpose of making a line of products is to profit from it. While Gisele might have profited a lot from her natural skincare line, Sejaa, her motivation behind creating and investing in the project, had little to do with money.

As she told Vogue in 2010, her experience as a teenager was difficult when it came to her appearance. One would assume that a supermodel who earns her living by looking beautiful in front of thousands of people must have always been a confident person. That is not true with Gisele. Apparently, when she was a teenager, she was self-conscious about her skin problems. Gisele said she had pimples, and every time someone looked at her, she thought they were looking at her pimples. Thus came the idea for the skincare line.

“I wanted to teach girls to love themselves and take care of their bodies. What is the first thing you see every morning? Your face! What do you put every day on your face? Cream! I have made the simplest, purest cream—an everyday cream—but it comes with an affirmation.”

Forget: Sunscreen Is Poison

Call it a language barrier. Call it an unfortunate mistake. Call it whatever you want. The comments Gisele made about sunscreen in the wake of the release of her skincare line were nothing short of disturbing. That was the mentality that several cancer researchers and doctors had as they ruthlessly criticized the supermodel for her comments.

In promoting her all-natural line, Gisele said about sunscreen, “I cannot put this poison on my skin. I do not use anything synthetic.”

She might not have explicitly told people that wearing sunscreen is wrong, but as one expert said, when a public figure makes a statement like that, it can create confusion among regular folks. And in this case, the confusion can be dangerous. Imagine if all of Gisele’s more than 12 million social media followers, many of whom live in tropical areas like Brazil, decided to stop wearing sunscreen if they heard the model saying something like that. The consequences could be catastrophic from a public health standpoint.

Know: The Net Worth

It is impossible to talk about Gisele without mentioning how ridiculous her net worth is. If you go to the town of Horizontina, in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, and ask the folks there if they ever imagined someone from the town would have a net worth of $345 million, they would almost unanimously say no.

Still, that is exactly what happened when the most famous citizen ever to come out of that town reached her peak in the world of modeling and celebrities. Just picture this: it was in 1996 when Gisele had her first break in New York City as she modeled at Fashion Week. By 2000, she was already one of Victoria’s Secret Angels. And by 2004, she was already the world’s highest-paid model. More than that, in 2007, she was listed as the 16th richest person in all the entertainment industry. Meanwhile, her husband, Tom Brady, has a net worth of $131 million. That is one household in which there will never be a money problem.

Forget: The Super Bowl Scandal

Brazil is famous around the world for their football accolades. But, the football over there is not the same kind of football played in North America, at least in the name. Where Gisele comes from, people actually play football with their feet and not with their hands like her husband does. And that, by itself, makes Gisele better suited than most North Americans to comment on football (soccer). But it goes both ways, and she has felt that more than once.

Every time this model tries to comment on American football, she is slammed. And none of her remarks were more notorious than what she said after the New England Patriots lost Super Bowl XLVI. It will always be remembered how, after the Super Bowl, Gisele started bashing Tom Brady’s teammates and yelling stuff like, “My husband cannot f*cking throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”

Needless to say, her comments did not go over well within the football community.

Know: Her Book

When we talk about ridiculously overpriced items, the first thing that comes to mind these days are the Big Baller shoes Lonzo Ball’s dad is trying to shove down everyone’s throats. But even though $500 shoes do seem like a steep price to pay, imagine paying $700 for a book. Yeah, those books probably would never sell, right?

Wrong.

Back in 2015, a book featuring curated photographs that timeline Gisele’s career was put on the market at an astounding retail price of $700. And despite that impressive price tag, the initial pre-order run of 1000 copies of the book sold out in a blink of an eye.

We aren’t sure how the book has kept up in terms of sales as time went on, but we can safely assume that a $700 tome comprising 536 pages on the life of Gisele that sold 1000 copies in pre-orders alone, would undoubtedly do well once it hits the market.