It-couple footballer Moana Hope and model Isabella Carlstrom on love, marriage, babies and being style ambassadors
IT-COUPLE Moana Hope and Isabella Carlstrom are an out and proud gay couple. Just don’t call them role models.
VIC News
Don't miss out on the headlines from VIC News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
AFTER stepping out publicly together for the first time at last year’s Brownlow Medal count, AFLW star Moana Hope and her model girlfriend of almost two years, Isabella Carlstrom, have been the talk of the town.
Their relaxed and open expression of their relationship, high-profile careers and shared dedication to the full-time care of Hope’s disabled sister Lavinia have captured attention and admiration.
But put the title “role model” to them and they shy away, though they’re proud to be having a positive influence on others.
MOANA HOPE ON SURVIVOR AUSTRALIA
“When it comes to ‘role model’ people throw that word at me a lot, but for me personally that puts me on a pedestal and I’m not on a pedestal. I sit where everyone else sits,” Hope says. “I don’t go on social media and post a photo of me and Bella thinking, ‘Let’s post this because we’re gay’.
“I go, ‘I love you and I want everyone to know how much I love you and why I love you’. So when I post that, if that makes young people or adults go, ‘I need to be more myself or that makes me be more confident’, then that’s good.
“I’ve been sent messages from kids. I had one last week from a kid who said they came out to their parents after they’d seen our relationship.
“And others from kids who have suffered depression for years because they couldn’t come out. I’ve had people who were going to commit suicide and didn’t commit suicide because of my story and the person I was, and that’s not to make it about us.
“But if being me and being us and being together makes people see they can be themselves, that they don’t need to open a magazine and be what is written in there or what people say you have to be, you don’t have to be the coolest kid in school. It’s just about being you.”
While Hope and Carlstrom have unintentionally pushed boundaries as an out and proud gay couple, they’re about to take it a step further with plans to marry and start a family next year.
“It is definitely going to happen next year. My greatest dream in life is to have a family, and who better to have a family with?” Hope says. “If I had my way, it would be tomorrow, but it’s model life and my finger is still bare (ring finger).”
Carlstrom says she and Hope, fresh from a stint on Australian Survivor, plan to marry next year in an intimate ceremony.
“I’ve never really fantasised about a wedding or getting married, but with Mo I want it all,” she says. “I’ll be getting my brother as a bridesmaid, we’ll be breaking all the rules. No dresses, just friends and family. We want to share it with them.”
Hope says, “It’s just going to be very us. I’ll walk down the aisle with my mum and she’ll do the same with her dad.”
EXTRACT FROM MOANA HOPE’S BOOK, MY WAY
The couple has started looking into procuring donor sperm in the hope Carlstrom will fall pregnant late next year.
“I plan to play footy for another 10 years because I love football, so a couple from Bell and I’ll definitely be having one too,” Hope says. “I can’t wait to have a child myself.
“It’s bizarre, I’ve got 14 brothers and sisters and they’re popping out babies left, right and centre and I’ve got to go and choose by a piece of paper. It’s odd, but we’re pretty odd anyway, so it probably fits in with us.”
From the outside it seems they have it all — a happy relationship, invitations to A-list events and successful sporting and modelling careers — but it has been far from smooth sailing.
Carlstrom suffered terrible bullying as a teenager and Hope’s well-documented journey includes dropping out of school from years 7-10 to care for her father before he died from cancer.
While she is comfortable in her own skin now, dealing with being gay was also difficult for Hope when she was younger.
“I used to get really bad anxiety about being gay. It used to get so bad that I wouldn’t go to public toilets because I didn’t want to be judged,” she says. “I would say back in the day some people were really judgmental but to know that the votes were so high for ‘Yes’ (in the same-sex marriage referendum), it made me feel more comfortable and that I belonged.”
She endured one of the toughest years of her life last year, struggling with depression.
“I was injured for the first year of AFLW and the second year was mentally more of a depression, so Bell has had to deal with both sides of it,” Hope says. “For her, last year, there was a lot of holding me in her arms while I’m in tears or me calling her on the way to training with anxiety and her saying, ‘You can do this, just go and train’.
“It was a collective of things. I play football because I love it and then you get put into this environment, and people treat you differently and make it like they own you and you will do this and nothing else.
“The media only see one side of it. I was getting smashed left and right, but nobody knew what was really going on and nobody knew or really understood maybe I was getting told to play a certain way, maybe that was the instructions I was given.”
Hope was the poster girl for the highly anticipated women’s league and her childhood dreams of playing professionally were tarnished by her two years playing for Collingwood. But she is excited about the season ahead after signing with North Melbourne.
“I’ve felt that hug of love both off and on the field and I can say that’s the first time I’ve felt that hug of love from a football club,” she says. “I know this year is going to be a lot different.
“North is just a different kind of environment. I was in their gym and I come from a club where everything is Mickey Mouse, brand new, everything is about how it looks.
“I’m at a club now where the gym stuff is old and I don’t care because all they care about is you. They don’t care about having the million-dollar gym set-up, they have the gym set-up to do what you need to get done.
“But what’s more important is the first day I came in they were like, ‘Here’s your doctor, here’s your coach, everything is there, whatever you need’.
“And they don’t just say it and walk away, they said it and they follow through. I feel like I’ve been adopted and feel so happy there.”
HOPE HAS PLAYED HER LAST GAME FOR COLLINGWOOD
The club has even extended that warmth and welcome to Carlstrom and Hope’s 24-year-old sister, who she affectionately calls Vinny.
Vinny has the rare congenital neurological disorder moebius syndrome. Hope took over her permanent, full-time care several years ago.
“Even with Vinny, when we met with them I said, ‘What if Bella’s off modelling in another state and I’ve got Vinny, what’s the scenario for the club?” and they said, ‘Bring her down and we’ll make her water girl’.
“Even the boys at North Melbourne, when I got out of Survivor, I had all these messages from the boys saying welcome to the club and they’ve just been beautiful, so supportive and it doesn’t feel like it’s forced.”
While many male AFL stars sign million-dollar contracts, the fledgling women’s league pays a relative pittance, which means most of the girls need at least one other job to survive. Hope is no exception, running her own transport management company around her footy commitments and caring for Vinny.
“I have between 70 and 80 people that work for me. We supply traffic to some of the biggest companies doing works in Victoria,” she says.
“I’m very passionate about what I do. I’m the kid who didn’t go to school between year 7 and 11 because I took care of my dad who had cancer, and now I’m running a company by myself and it’s pretty amazing.”
The days are long and unrelenting, but Hope wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’ll get up at 3am or 4am and work until about 8am or 9am and then train from 9am to 11am and then we’ll work again and train again in the afternoon and then work again, so it’s literally an ongoing rollercoaster,” she says.
“However I don’t complain because that job puts food on the table and makes sure Vinny has a roof over her head, I can take care of mum’s medical bills.
“Bell works for me as well in traffic, around her own modelling and helping me with Vinny. She helps out so I’ve got time to go train.”
One perk of being in the spotlight is getting to fulfil other dreams, including taking on a role as a style ambassador for the upcoming Caulfield Cup Carnival. Hope and Carlstrom have been signed together for their unique sense of style, which reflects the contemporary and relaxed vibe at Caulfield.
“When I was a kid I used to wish I could go to the races and now we’re style ambassadors for the Caulfield Cup Carnival,” Hope says. “I can honestly say, and it’s going to sound corny, but I can say this because of where I’ve come from, but I’m standing out there in the middle of the Caulfield track and taking part in a photo shoot with the woman I love for the carnival.
“It seriously goes back to how many blessings can one person have? It is really amazing.”
Hope still pinches herself at finding love with Carlstrom.
“I’d decided I was going to be single forever, not because I didn’t trust anyone could be great, but because I just needed to be focused. But Bell ruined all of that,” Hope jokes.
She knew that finding a woman who would understand her busy lifestyle and accept that Vinny would be an integral part of it would be a challenge. But Carlstrom didn’t think twice about leaping into it.
“It didn’t even cross my mind when I met Vinny. She’s not a burden or difficult, she’s disabled but she’s incredibly able,” Carlstrom says. “She’s the best company. Thank God I had her when Mo went on Survivor.
“I wouldn’t have my life any other way. If anything happened to Mo, I would never let Vinny out of my sight. She’s mine forever.”
Carlstrom has become a second mum to Vinny.
“She calls us Mum, which is super cute,” Hope says. “When I came back from Survivor, they have somehow created this relationship, which I am completely and utterly jealous about.
“I sent Vinny away to Queensland on a little holiday and ... day one I was waiting for my phone to ring. She’s got a phone and she calls me all the time.
“She didn’t call my phone but I kept seeing Bella’s phone going off, and then she called me and I was like, ‘Yeah!’ and I say, ‘What’s up?’ and she says, ‘Is Bell there?’.”
Hope also credits Carlstrom with helping to dramatically change Vinny’s life.
“Bell has actually helped to turn her health around because she had an overactive thyroid so she would put on weight continuously,” Hope says. “Bell tried to tweak the eating a bit, and we tried a vegan diet. She trains once a day on the treadmill.
“After three months we went back to the doctor and got some test results and her thyroid problem doesn’t exist any more and she’s lost 50 kilos. She’s beaming now.”
Family is everything to the girls, not just the desire to create their own, but to celebrate the families they have come from.
“My parents just adore Mo. If we’re sitting down at the table, Mum and Dad fight over who is sitting next to Moana — they’re obsessed,” Carlstrom says. “Everyone gets along so well.”
The Caulfield Cup Carnival runs from October 13-20
RELATED CONTENT
‘Angels’: Hero Coles workers save mum’s life
A mother of three has opened up on how her life was saved after she suddenly collapsed while doing a routine supermarket shop.
Wildlife and traffic fears over music festival
Wildlife advocates fear a weekend music festival in central Victoria will endanger native animals including rescued joeys.