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How Australia made a villain out of Lara Bingle
"People perceive me in the way the media chooses to paint me."
Model Lara Bingle, now Lara Worthington, has had her name pulled through the mud. If we all had our decisions put under the microscope, we may not come off squeaky clean, but that's the price of being in the public eye.
However, it seems that women have a much harsher lens put over their moves than men do, as Lara can attest to.
Lara, 36, was just 19 years old when she shot to fame in Tourism Australia's infamous So where the bloody hell are you? ad campaign.
But it was her popularity that soon saw her targeted by sports fans, the media and the public.
Men's magazine cover
With her popularity soaring after the tourism ad, lads mag Zoo approached the model to do a cover shoot and spread. But she turned them down. Not to be deterred, they managed to get hold of a photoshoot and splashed on the cover "World Exclusive! Bloody Hell! TV ad girl Lara Bingle's first-ever men's mag shoot."
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She took legal action for breach of copyright and for defamation, as the magazine implied that she had consented to a shoot with them.
Affair with Brendan Fevola
That same year, she met 26-year-old AFL footballer Brendan Fevola on The Footy Show. The pair embarked on a five-week affair which Lara ended when she discovered that he was a married father-of-two.
The teenager only found out his relationship status when she heard a baby crying in a phone call with the footy player.
"We spoke a lot on the phone because he was in Melbourne and I was in Sydney. We were talking one day and I asked: 'What's that noise', and he said: 'It's my baby', and then it all came out," she revealed.
Despite not knowing Brendan was in a relationship and being single herself, Lara was painted as a homewrecker.
Brendan and his wife Alex briefly broke up, but they gave an interview to A Current Affair where they both blamed Lara - the single one who had no idea Brendan was married.
Fame hunter
Lara then found love with Australian cricketer Michael Clarke. The pair met in 2007, and by 2008 they were engaged.
But the media pushed the narrative that Clarke's ex-girlfriend of eight years, Erina-Lea Connelly, was "the latest casualty in model Lara Bingle's pursuit of champion sportsmen".
Revenge porn
Then, in 2010, nude photos of Lara as a teen were leaked to the press. Lara's ex, Brendan, had taken a naked photo of her in the shower in 2006 when they were briefly seeing each other, which he shared with his teammates. The photo was then leaked to the press and was published by a women's magazine.
"It has been terribly humiliating for me," Lara revealed at the time. "I also feel exploited and compromised by the release of a photograph I never gave permission to him to take, and one he promised he had deleted when he realised how upset I was that he would do that," she said.
But these days, Lara just gets on and does what she wants without worrying about what others think. "The headlines are what they are," Lara told Women's Weekly way back in 2010. "Although many have been inaccurate, I just take them in my stride and try to have a sense of humour about it all.
"People perceive me in the way the media chooses to paint me. I am just doing what I love and I feel blessed to be able to do that and be given extraordinary opportunities along the way."
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