Jesinta Franklin: ‘I’m not going to be the tanned, perfect blonde’
In an unusually candid interview, model Jesinta Franklin fires up about babies, Buddy — and being a beauty with brains.
Stellar
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Jesinta Franklin walked into the salon, asked for her hair to be chopped off, and her hairdresser freaked out.
“What, all of it?” asked the bemused stylist. “Have you called your manager and asked your agency? What about all your clients?”
But Franklin didn’t hesitate. Just weeks earlier she’d pulled out of protracted contract negotiations, ended her relationship with her modelling agency and pared down her management team to a trusted few.
Cutting her hair into a short, peroxided crop symbolised her choosing her own path, not one determined by others.
“For so long my hair had always been dictated by clients,” explains Franklin, her elfin cut freshly washed and slicked back for a photo shoot with Stellar.
“If they wanted it blonde or with a fringe or curled, that’s what I did. But I wasn’t going to be that Aussie girl who’s tanned and blonde with perfectly conicalled hair for the rest of my career.
“I wanted to bring more depth; I wanted to show women that they’re not bound by rules and that beauty looks different on everyone and you can still be feminine and have short hair.”
There was, however, one person she forgot to inform — her husband and AFL star Lance “Buddy” Franklin.
“I didn’t tell him,” she admits with a laugh. “But I could probably shave my head and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid. I’m so lucky to have a man who loves me for more than how I look.”
It’s more than a year since the former Miss Universe Australia made a monumental pivot on the work front, stepping away from secure but somewhat restrictive gigs and towards a portfolio career of her own making.
While she’s arguably less visible commercially, she’s more content personally and, at 27, appears to have achieved the work-life balance others spend a lifetime trying to reconcile.
In part, she was spurred on by her mum, Valerie, being diagnosed with bowel cancer and was also dismayed by the cult of busyness that infects so many industries.
“I’ve taken my life and my career into my own hands,” she tells Stellar. “In modelling, when someone asked you how you were, it was like this competition to see if you could be busier than the other person.
“But when my mum got sick last year, I learnt I also had the gene that made me susceptible to bowel cancer. I needed to start making time for myself now so that later on my health is preserved.”
But “slow and steady” is not in the Franklin playbook. With ambitions to buy a house aged 15, a Miss Universe competition under her belt at 19, a flourishing TV career notched up by 20, marriage at 25 and intentions of retiring at 40, taking it easy must’ve been highly contrary to character.
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“I’ve always been quite determined,” she admits sheepishly. “In fact, I was born at 9.45am on the day I was due. It was like, ‘It’s 9am. Hello world.’ I’d also been raised by a mum who’d given me an incredible work ethic.
“After my sister and I were born, she went back to work and my dad stayed at home to look after us. Mum has worked and worked and worked her entire life, but you learn a lot when you’re faced with your own mortality.”
While her mum has recovered well from surgery, Franklin says the experience has made her more appreciative of both her family and her health.
She’s always had big goals, but in choosing to manage her own career she felt she could work smarter rather than harder, but also more meaningfully.
These days, as well as modelling, she partners with brands as diverse as Longines, Dior and Moët & Chandon, and is determined to be more than just a “face” of the label.
“As great as the modelling industry is, there’s not much challenge in getting your hair and make-up done,” she says wryly.
“Obviously there are days when you’re exhausted on set but intellectually there’s not much challenge or engagement, so getting involved in the business side of things adds another layer of interest.
“I’m really involved from the early stages of my ambassadorship with a brand and am very open to going to strategy meetings. I don’t need a massive entourage and to palm things off to others.”
As the ambassador for the forthcoming Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes, Franklin loves the fashion element of racing — and can’t wait to see who takes home the prestigious Prize for Elegance — but she’s also thrilled to see history in the making as champion mare Winx runs her final race before retiring.
“I always used to get dolled up and see more of the fashion than the actual horses — particularly since racewear is so elegant. With pop culture showing off so much skin and these crazy outfits, I loved feeling elegant and feminine — especially since elegance is something women solely own... it’s not something a man can be.”
While she’s encouraging racegoers to wear a touch of blue in support of Winx’s race colours, when it comes to the event the frills and fascinators will give way to all things equestrian.
“At last year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes, I was right down on the edge of the track, leaning on the rail at the finish line and I got really teary as Winx crossed the line,” she recalls.
“Three days earlier I’d met the horse at a photo opportunity and my dad had come with me, so there was a little personal connection there and I appreciated what goes on behind the scenes.”
While her relationship with luxury brands makes Franklin’s life look like an enviable round of long lunches and champagne-fuelled yachting jaunts, scratch the surface and you find a gutsiness beneath the glamour.
With the aim being to retire by the time she’s 40 to devote her time to charitable work, the model has never been one for wasting time or money.
“I have a very short time in this industry where I have the capacity to earn really good money,” she reveals.
“I didn’t want to be like other girls and make great money, blow it on silly things, party through my whole career and get to my 30s or 40s and find I hadn’t set myself up at all.
“I realise I’m in a different situation to a lot of 27-year-olds and I’m very grateful for that. But my message to young women is to let go of the idea that you’re going to meet someone who looks after you for the rest of your life. Look after yourself.”
While her year of reckoning has prompted both a career and health refocus, Franklin has also relaxed her expectations of herself.
Whereas once she’d get off a plane at 10.30pm and still head to the gym at 5am the next morning before a full day’s shoot, now she might opt for a gentle walk or swim instead.
“For years I had things in the calendar that meant I always had to look good. It was hard not to focus on that when your sole income comes from the way you look. But I’ve done the research and I know rest is just as important. If I wake up and feel like going for a 5km run I will, but if I’m tired I’ll go for a walk and listen to a podcast.”
As well as giving back through charity work — she campaigns for Indigenous literacy and has worked for the late Jim Stynes’s Reach Foundation — Franklin speaks directly to her 400,000 Instagram fans through Q&A sessions.
Indeed, the night before her shoot with Stellar, she’d been answering questions on everything from career to make-up advice; though, as she points out, half of them were inquiring as to when she and her husband were going to start a family.
While she accepts she’s in the public eye, a recent question from a journalist as to whether she and Buddy were having protected sex has understandably riled her.
“It’s so disgusting. I have girlfriends close to me trying for a child and I think there’s a lot of insensitivity around the subject. You don’t know who’s struggling with infertility or who might have just had a miscarriage. I think it happens when it’s meant to happen.”
Such pragmatism underpins her marriage and while the couple recently celebrated their second wedding anniversary with a five-week trip to the Maldives, France, England, Lapland and Iceland, she’s quick to point out that “it’s not all sunshine and butterflies”.
She says seven years with the Sydney Swans star has taught her patience and compromise.
“There’s what I want, what he wants and there’s always a third alternative — the middle ground you meet at to keep each other happy. There’s so much happiness in a marriage, but there’s also days where you have to understand someone else’s perspective and put their needs first.”
To that end, she chooses to stay home with her husband on Friday nights before a big game instead of going out with her girlfriends, while he came up with an innovative gift on her last birthday.
Though the couple refrain from excessive gift-giving, when she turned 27 on August 12 last year her husband had flowers delivered with a note telling her that on the 12th of each month for the forthcoming year she’d receive a fresh new bunch.
“It’s such a perfect, thoughtful gift because I love fresh flowers and I always forget they’re coming, and then the doorbell rings or the courier texts and there’s this big bunch of flowers and a note saying, ‘I love you.’”
Though her home and work life are now in harmony, Franklin says there is one role she’d grab with both hands.
With experience as a reporter and commentator under her belt, she’d love a TV hosting gig but has to date missed out, she says, because executives felt mums watching at home wouldn’t relate to her.
Yet she praises the fact two women have taken the helm at Today, where she was once a weekly panellist, and applauds the show’s entertainment reporter Brooke Boney for her stance on not celebrating Australia Day.
“I have a real interest in people and world events and whenever I was on that platform I wanted to say things with meaning and depth,” she says. “I’m very open to being back on television.”
In the meantime, she vows to remember to tell her husband when she’s planning on having a new haircut.
“I started off with a blonde bob, then I went a bit shorter, then I put a peachy colour in it,” she laughs. “Every time he comes home, it’s like coming home to a new woman!”
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Originally published as Jesinta Franklin: ‘I’m not going to be the tanned, perfect blonde’