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“There are all these preconceived notions about models,” says Angela Lindvall, “and I feel like I’m so far from that.”
In person, bikini-clad and red-lipsticked on the patio of a Pasadena mansion, Lindvall doesn’t exactly dispel any of those notions: She looks like what would happen if you asked all of America’s red-blooded 17-year-old boys to simultaneously stop rubbing themselves long enough to rub a giant magic lamp and make a wish. At first glance, or even on her 100-and-something-th magazine cover (she can’t recall how many), she’s the very dictionary definition of a dream-girl supermodel.
Since being discovered in a Kansas City fashion show at age 14, she’s strutted her long, lean body, flipped that windswept blonde hair, and jutted her where’d-those-come-from? hips on rocky mountaintops and red carpets. She’s sashayed down catwalks as a Victoria’s Secret angel in garters, thigh-highs, and those so-ridiculous-they’re-hot fantasy wings.
She’s rolled in the sand and clung to particularly scenic seaside rocks in bikinis (or the bottom halves of bikinis) for SI swimsuit issues. And she’s leveled come-hither glances, mischievous smiles, and striking stares, over and over. Her face isn’t just her face; it’s been “the face” of all of your favorite rappers’ most name-checked brands, from Valentino to Dior to Chloé.
“I’m from Missouri, and I can totally go kick it by a campfire with cowboys,” Lindvall says, after changing into short-shorts and a tied-off denim shirt, “and then I can go to the shows in Paris with Karl Lagerfeld and eat caviar. I like the contrast.”
The daughter of a pharmacist and a massage therapist, Lindvall has made a career of being the dream girl—but she’s done it her own way, and crafted her own real-life fantasy by being aggressive in going after what she wants: She dropped out of modeling at 23 to raise her first son. “I was right at the height of my career, and everyone was like, ‘Are you sure? Your career is going to be over.’ And I was like, ‘My body is telling me this is what I want to do.’ I was prepared to be done, and then I had this comeback.”
Three years later, she had a second son, took another break from the business, and reemerged bigger than ever. Now the divorced mother makes her home on a secluded, seven-acre Topanga Canyon ranch.
“I run around barefoot, I grow vegetables, I have a little fruit orchard, and we have chickens,” she says. “I feel like the real me is so much more the girl that is digging in the soil and taking care of the kids and growing vegetables. My boyfriend will be like, ‘Oh, my God, I totally forgot I’m dating a supermodel.’ And he’s like, ‘What I love about you is that you’re a dork and you love to get dirty.’”
That last line might actually have the double meaning you’re no doubt reading into it. Lindvall believes deeply in techniques and relationships that channel “masculine and feminine energies,” including tantric sex. She believes that men and women shouldn’t strive to be the same, but instead should aim for complementary roles. Personally, she likes a strong, rugged man, like her partner of two years, even if she did have to make the first pass, by asking for a ride on the back of his motorcycle.
“I love a motorcycle,” she says. “I love being on a bike with a man. And I like a man who carries a knife and can fix things.”
Lindvall says she’s not attracted to the picture-perfect guys she works with. “There’s nothing worse than a guy who’s taking longer to get ready than me,” she says, though she does offer Maxim readers the same advice she gave her man. “I told my dude, ‘I love your Converse, but you’ve got to get some man shoes,’” she says, stressing that men need leather. “I love a good pair of boots. And every man should have a good dress suit, especially if you’re hanging out with me, and a pair of cuff links, a nice watch, a good wallet, a nice belt: James Bond–ish. But I’d rather have a bit of a scraggly beard than the other extreme.”
Lindvall says her holistic yoga training has, yes, extended to sex.
“I’m an avid studier. Someone taught me how to give a great hand job the other day—and a great blow job,” she says, laughing. “My boyfriend was stoked! These techniques are so good to know. Just connecting this life-force energy, you can have an orgasm in every single cell of your body…instead of just down there.”
Lindvall urges readers to slow down. “A man is totally fine if you go straight for the dick,” she says, taking a pull on her vape cigarette. “But don’t go straight for the parts, guys! Make her really want you to touch the tits, and then touch the tits. Then make her really, really want you to go down there—and get it worked up so that when you get there, it’s all juicy and ready to go.”
She says men shouldn’t sweat the technique because “what turned us on yesterday might not turn us on tomorrow.” Instead, she says, guys should treat a woman’s body like an instrument. “Should I touch her here first or here? Just start playing this violin! Men like tools! Start playing around.”
If he does it right, Lindvall says, a man can bring out a woman’s animalistic side. “I call it awakening the dragon, because women are insane,” she says, conjuring an image of Game of Thrones’ Khaleesi. “It’s almost scary when a woman is, like, fully there; it’s like, ‘Whoa, the dragon has awoken!’”