THE ATHLETE

A day in the life...

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic ushered us into the age of Zoom, a lot of different people’s faces have popped up on my computer screen: friends catching me up on their lives, professors reciting lectures, relatives struggling to un-mute themselves on unfamiliar technology. Still, a former Division 1 basketball player-turnedmodel is a new one for me.

Referring to Julie Henderson as a model seems like an oversimplification. She is, as I mentioned, a former basketball player for the University of Notre Dame, as well as an actor, a writer, and, according to the bio of her (now largely inactive – but we’ll get to that) Instagram account, a “hair whisperer.” She’s also a font of the sort of sage-but-never-boring wisdom that, for the lucky listener, feels like it could serve as a pretty sound navigational tool for roughing the choppy waters of life, love, work, adulthood – the works. From the moment she appears on my screen for our interview, I’m struck by her self-possession, a poised sense of calm evident even in spite of the nearly thousand miles of physical distance separating us. This is a woman who knows herself – her real, authentic self – and her worth. No mean feat in a world characterized by conformity and commodification.

Although, she confides, this sense of self was not always quite so fullyformed, nor did it spring up effortlessly overnight. After graduating with an enviable set of collegiate athletic and academic credentials, Julie embarked on what seemed like the most obvious course of action: corporate job, city apartment, sense of security, etc., etc., etc., . . . and she hated it. Far from the dream life and legitimate fulfillment it offers to some, this path proved unsatisfying for her, ultimately incompatible with what she describes as her “desire to be in the world in a way you can’t fit in a box.” So, disinterested in the road ahead of her, Julie journeyed about as far away from that path as a person can get.

The modeling industry is notoriously impossible to enter and infamously difficult to navigate, and yet Julie dove into it headfirst, marching straight into a new city and unfamiliar line of work without knowing how exactly it would all play out. While this sense of the unknown likely seems anxiety-inducing to many, Julie counters that notion by pushing against the idea that any path is quite as secure as it seems. “What is really security in this lifetime?” she asks, describing the question as a personal mantra. Better to pursue passion, even if it might appear less traditionally stable than other routes, than dawdle in an area of disinterest that could ultimately prove to be just as insecure (but far less gratifying). Certainly, the journey she chose was not always easy — she candidly discusses how “it took a while” to resist the pressures to intermittently lose and gain weight that plagued the earlier days of her career — but, with the tenacity of a lifelong athlete and competitor, Julie persevered. She muscled through the toughest moments of an inherently bumpy career path, weathered all of the storms of uncertainty that swirled around those early days of her modeling work, mentally and emotionally got “in shape for her life,” as she puts it – “the ups and the downs, the nos and the yeses.”

And now? Now, Julie knows who she is and who she isn’t, what she wants and what things she would rather avoid. I used the word “authentic” to describe her before, with some slight trepidation; “authenticity” is the sort of buzzword that gets thrown around so liberally these days that its use now often evokes more eyerolls than interest. However, the word feels genuinely appropriate here. Speaking with Julie, you get the sense that she truly, wholeheartedly means everything she says (and that she wouldn’t say anything she doesn’t).

To be authentic doesn’t necessarily mean to be wholly available to everyone in every sense, however – a distinction not always made in our society’s present state of social media and screen affixation, where the impulse for endless sharing often reigns supreme. While there can be a power in online openness and the choice to share personal things within a broader community, these actions can also, with the wrong intentions, take a turn for the worse; if our existences are commodities, it’s important that we sell ourselves accordingly, right? Recognizing this potential for depersonalization – and not gaining much herself from the experience of an online existence – Julie has made a choice that is somewhat radical in the modern age and especially for someone in her industry: she’s off of Instagram. The date of her most recent post? June of 2020. Though models like Julie can make hundreds, thousands of dollars per post (and rack up an invaluable degree of public exposure to boot) all with the mere click of a button, she has opted out altogether. The way in which she was encouraged to use the app was characterized by the conflicting pressures placed upon a model in the public eye, to strike an impossibly perfect balance she describes as “making yourself feel regular but also beautiful” without straying too far in either direction, and all of this pressure strained against what Julie refers to as “a gut instinct.” What began as a twoweek sabbatical from the app after receiving hurtful comments about her biracial identity ultimately evolved into a three-year hiatus once Julie realized “how happy I was being off it . . . just the freedom” that she felt. This is not to say that Julie and Instagram have forever parted ways, however, as she is currently toying around with the idea of returning to the platform. For this to happen, she says, she must first figure out a way to exist on the app that also answers the question, “how can I do this in a way that is true to me?” Because that is what Julie Henderson does, what she ensures is at the core of all of her undertakings and endeavors: a commitment to herself.

Julie states this with an offhand, casual confidence when I ask her about the thought process underlying certain life and career choices she’s made. Talking to her, you get the impression that she’s spent her life figuring out how to foster that fire, tending to the flame with the respect and attention that it – she – deserves. We could all stand to learn a thing or two from someone who’s commanded both the basketball court and her own life’s trajectory like Julie has.

By Caroline Kranick