Kendall Jenner Talks About Getting Out of the Kardashian Shadow

When Kim Kardashian is your older half-sister, “normal childhood” is off the menu. That didn’t stop Kendall Jenner from making her girlhood dreams come true. Here, the model opens up about growing up on the E! network, breaking into the fashion industry, and being the center of attention—on her own.

Kendall Jenner has bad skin. Not today, of course. Today she is radiant and luminous, with the kind of million-dollar complexion that represents a major beauty company. But inside, she is still a girl with breakouts. “I had just started ninth grade when I got my acne,” she says. “And I had braces. I wouldn’t look people in the eye. It was not a good time for me—it just killed my self-esteem. I thought when I didn’t look at someone, they couldn’t see my face.” This fairly standard teenage experience is particularly poignant in Jenner’s case. When she went through puberty, she couldn’t hide from anyone.

Jenner came of age in front of a weekly audience of millions as Kim’s little sister on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. “I still have a hard time looking at someone when I’m talking to them, and I get nervous,” she says. Unless that someone is holding a camera. “When I started getting in front of the camera a lot, I think my confidence started to come out,” says the model. “It took a minute, because I had to believe in myself.” Unlike the majority of models today, Jenner has no tattoos. “I have a really weird thing about ‘forever.’ And my sister Kim always said, ‘Don’t put a bumper sticker on a Bentley.'”

Jenner’s natural hair is pin-straight. To transform it for the cover look (shown here), hairstylist Christiaan curled it with a medium-barrel curling iron, teased a few random sections, and then coiled them around his finger before pinning them all. Once the hair cooled, he took out the pins and shook out the curls.

Makeup artist Lucia Pica ran a smudgy black liner all along the model’s upper and lower lash lines. A hint of bronzer and a ɴuᴅᴇ lipstick balanced the intensity of the eyes. It can be re-created with Estée Lauder’s Double Wear Stay-in-Place Eye Pencil in Onyx, Bronze Goddess Powder Bronzer in Deep, and Pure Color Envy Sculpting Lipstick in Insatiable Ivory.

Bathing suit by Hermès, and bracelet by Balmain.

The model’s costar for the day was a monkey, but not just any monkey. The capuchin also played Ross’s pet, Marcel, on Friends. Perched on Jenner’s shoulder for one of the sH๏τs, the monkey twirled and played with her hair. (Good thing she loves animals.)

Jenner hasn’t known complete privacy since age 11. She learned about tampons from her sisters as the E! network filmed. “It started so early that it’s the only thing I can remember,” she says. “[My sister] Kylie and I had to grow up in front of people, and it was hard sometimes…but it was never a negative thing.” Jenner’s fascination with models started when she was young. As kids, she and Kylie took pictures of themselves in the backyard, and Jenner compiled her first portfolio, which she called Kendall’s Modeling Book. “I would read magazines, and I would look at pictures with these women who looked so powerful,” Jenner says. “I wanted to be that to some little girl or little boy.”