Anderson Cooper is widely considered one of the most attractive TV news hosts in the world, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t have any struggles with his own self-image.
During a new interview on the Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, Kelly Ripa and Cooper reminisced about their long-term friendship and how it’s evolved over the years. The CNN anchor also opened up about his career, becoming a father, and his personal life – including thoughts about how he perceives himself at age 56.
“I don’t know how I got that [silver fox label]. I think somewhere it was written down, and then other people started writing it down,” the CNN host explained. “I liked when I had salt-and-pepper hair. I started going gray my senior year of college. I was on the [racing] crew team and I was starving myself to get down to 125 pounds. I would drop 20 pounds for races and my hair by senior year started to go gray, which I think has something to do with my poor diet and starving myself.”
Cooper added, “[But it’s also] definitely genetic. Both my mom and dad started going gray early. Salt-and-pepper [hair] I didn’t mind. In my mind, I still have that, but I try to avoid looking in mirrors now because I look in the mirror and I’m like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I’m just completely white. If I took off my glasses you couldn’t see me at all.”
“What I realized is that with my hair really short, you can just see my pink rat-like scalp. It’s not that the hair itself is thinning, it’s just that you can see my little pink scalp,” Cooper observed. “I think I see myself quite honestly, but who sees themselves in a real way? We all have these incredibly warped perceptions of ourselves and constantly being on TV doesn’t help. We are constantly seeing ourselves on a monitor in high definition, which no one should see.”
During the podcast, Cooper also talked about a wild story that he and Ripa had with Madonna while seeing her perform at a concert in Brooklyn.
“I love the whole idea of it. I love the experience of it. [But] I don’t love the video that exists of it,” Cooper said. As Ripa recalled, Cooper was plucked out of the audience and brought onto the stage. There, Madonna bent him over and spanked him with her high heels. “I danced terribly. It was mortifying,” he commented on the experience.
We love you, Anderson Cooper… but fans also love to watch that video! So here it is in case anyone would like to revisit that glorious performance!
