The Untold Truth Of Kendall Jenner

If you haven't heard of the Kardashian family by now, please stop everything you're doing and reevaluate your life. The Kardashian-Jenners pretty much dominate the entertainment news cycle. And while Kim (and more recently, Kylie) breaking the internet is an almost daily occurrence, one member of the family is quietly slaying the fashion industry. Kendall Jenner, the daughter of Kris Kardashian and Caitlyn Jenner, made her first major runway appearance for Marc Jacobs in 2014.

Since then, she's strutted for major fashion houses like Victoria's Secret, appeared on the cover of Vogue and in commercials for Estee Lauder. Read on to find out more about the powerhouse model.

By the time Kendall Jenner was born, she already had three sisters and a mother whose name began with "K." It's only natural her name would follow suit. In her book Kris Jenner... and All Things Kardashian, the Kardashian matriarch discussed how she went to Kathie Lee-Gifford, Kendall's godmother, for advice on what to name her next daughter. "I started throwing out names to Kathie Lee," Jenner wrote in her memoir. "'Kameron'... 'Kendall' — and she stopped me at 'Kendall.'" It was a great choice — Kameron Jenner just doesn't have the same ring to it. 

Her middle name also has an interesting origin. Kendall Jenner's mom was close with Nicole Brown Simpson — in fact, according to Slate, she was considered "one of Nicole's five best girlfriends." In her memoir, Kris wrote about how she chose to honor her late friend by giving Kendall the middle name Nicole.

Though she's clearly at home on the runway these days, as a child Kendall Jenner had a strong passion for animals. She told Vogue that as a kid, she spent much of her time riding ponies.

In fact, if reality TV hadn't gotten involved, her career trajectory could've been completely different. "I was going to be a professional horseback rider and then a vet," she said in an interview with Harper's Bazaar. At this point, she's definitely too tall to be a jockey — but we bet she'd look great modeling equestrian clothing!

Keeping Up With The Kardashians started filming in 2007, before Kendall Jenner even hit her teen years. While you'd think growing up in front of the cameras would make it impossible to ever feel shy, Jenner is proof that isn't true. "I'm not super open to new people," she told Harper's Bazaar. "Sometimes I'm very closed off, which annoys me, but I think it's for the best."

Her shyness clearly hasn't impeded her ability to succeed in the fashion world, however she felt the effects of it when she was growing up. "I remember crying in my bedroom about the fact that Kylie had so many friends and I didn't," she explained to Vogue.

While the Kardashians are known for their glitz and glamour, Kendall Jenner says that's really just not her. The self-proclaimed tomboy told Vogue that as a kid, she "had ATVs and go-carts, and I grew up riding them all the time."

And despite being a high-fashion model, Jenner revealed to Harper's Bazaar that in reality she doesn't put much thought into what she wears when she's not on the runway. "You'll find me in yoga pants, a T-shirt, and sneakers almost every day," she explained. "My job is to wear something nice when I work, so I enjoy doing it then. But when I don't have to, I'd rather just wear something comfortable." If there's anyone that can make "comfortable" look high-fashion, it's Jenner.

With fame comes fans — and sometimes, fans cross a line into a whole new category and become fanatics. Unfortunately, Kendall Jenner's already had to deal with such a fan. According to The Daily Beast, Jenner came face-to-face with alleged stalker Shavaughn McKenzie in August of 2016.

According to TMZ, this wasn't the first time McKenzie came far too close to Jenner. He also allegedly "camped out at her West LA condo" before. Jenner testified against McKenzie, telling the judge, "I've never been so scared in my life." She secured a restraining order against the stalker.

Jenner is one of the most sought-out models of this generation, so you'd probably never guess she once dealt with acne and low self-esteem like the rest of us little people.

"I had just started ninth grade when I got my acne," she told Allure in 2015. Most of us had enough trouble dealing with breakouts in front of friends and family — imagine having to do it on television for the whole world to see. "It was not a good time for me — it just killed my self-esteem," she said. It was not until Jenner got in front of the camera that she found her confidence. "When I started getting in front of the camera a lot, I think my confidence started to come out," she explained.

In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner, then known as Bruce, appeared on 20/20 to announce that her "brain is much more female than it is male." She subsequently began to transition, legally changing her name to Caitlyn Marie Jenner — and changing Kendall's life forever. Caitlyn's transition wasn't easy for Kendall, who told Interview Magazine that her dad is her role model.

She said to Vogue, "Sometimes I look at a picture of my dad when she was a guy, and it makes me a little sad — I get emotional." Despite her feelings on the transition, Jenner reveals that she wasn't at all surprised. In fact, she'd seen Caitlyn in women's clothing even as a kid. "My whole life we would, like, catch her," she said, describing little clues that would pop up around the house, and even detailing a time when she caught Caitlyn walking through the house in "a wig and makeup and shoes — the full nine."

Aside from acne, Kendall Jenner suffers from other serious health issues. Namely, anxiety and sleep paralysis, which sometimes get so bad they threaten her career, she revealed in a 2016 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

"I'm freaking out because of these f*cking paralysis things," she told her mom. "I'm scared to fall asleep because it keeps happening to me. It almost feels like my heart stops."

In the same episode, Kris Jenner notes that sometimes her daughter's anxiety keeps her from being able to get on planes (which is a major part of every high-fashion model's career). If it came down to it, Jenner says she would choose her health over her career. "I think that my health is a bigger deal," she told her mom.

While you've probably heard of the more common phobias like arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and acrophobia (fear of heights), there are a few phobias that don't make much sense to those who don't have them. Trypophobia is definitely one of those fears. This irrational fear of holes affects up to 15 percent of people, according to a 2013 study — and Jenner is one of them. She revealed in a since-deleted blog post, "Anyone who knows me knows that I have really bad trypophobia," and says some things that trigger her phobia are "pancakes, honeycomb or lotus heads." 

In a 2014 Interview Magazine spread, Kendall Jenner revealed she used to lie a lot as a kid. "In kindergarten or first grade, I would tell people I had tigers living in my attic and a room full of gold," she said. And while everyone sprinkles a little white lie here and there, Jenner said that her lies never made much sense. "I would tell people I was from Hawaii, but I had a Southern accent," she said. "I was the biggest liar for no reason."

Today, Jenner pretty much sticks to the truth — except for when it comes to her sister, Kylie. "The only person I lie to is my little sister, when I steal her clothes," she said.

Whenever you come across a paparazzi picture of Kendall Jenner, it's likely that her BFF Gigi Hadid is right by her side — the two are basically inseparable. But they're not only best friends, they're also related. However, exactly how they're related is a little... messy. Jenner described their complicated relationship in an interview with Vogue. Get out your pen and paper. Ready? "Her stepdad is my half-brother's stepdad," she said. "Ex-stepdad," she clarified.

For those who still aren't quite sure what's going on in this family tree, Hadid also tried to explain the relationship in an interview with Vanity Fair. "My mom [Yolanda Foster] married David [Foster], who was married to Linda Jenner [Thompson], who is Bruce Jenner's ex-wife," Hadid explained. "We're related through divorced marriages." Still confused? Us too.

Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid are so close, in fact, that they have matching tattoos! Though Jenner told Allure in 2015 that she didn't have any tattoos because she has "a really weird thing about 'forever,'" things have since changed.

Not only did she make a "forever" mark on her body, but she marked her forever friendships by getting matching broken hearts with Hadid, Cara Delevingne, and Hailey Baldwin. "This is going to sound really, really lame," she said about the tattoos in a different interview with Allure, "but we all call ourselves the Supernatural Friend Group because we all have such cool individual lives and we've been dreaming about them since we were so young."

You'd think the person who once held the title of having the most-liked photo on Instagram would be all for social media. However, Kendall Jenner proves that's not so. "I find it offensive if you're with someone at a dinner and they're just sitting on their phone the whole time," she told Allure. "It's so crazy because even though we talk about trying to be present, everyone wants to be in the future now."

Jenner revealed to Interview Magazine that embracing the present is something she's really passionate about, saying "I take things in a lot. I'm kind of weird like that. I like to go outside at night by myself and look at the sky and just appreciate it." It's understandable, then, why she frowns up living life through a phone. To make sure she doesn't get lost in the world of social media, she told Allure, "sometimes I delete Instagram or Twitter or Snapchat off my phone for a couple days."

Despite having over 70 million followers on Instagram and walking runways with huge names like Karlie Kloss and the Hadid sisters, Kendall Jenner confesses that she still gets starstruck. So who could be so big that even a member of the Kardashian empire gets starstruck? Beyonce, of course. 

"I am 100 percent a huge fan of Beyoncé," she revealed to Harper's Bazaar. "If I see her, I will faint. I've met her before. I just get really nervous and quiet — I just shut up and bow down." Kendall, we totally get it.

It's easy to dismiss Jenner as just another reality TV star who is famous for being famous, but she consistently asserts the fact that she is extremely serious about modeling and her future in the industry. "This is a career — I want this to last for a long time," she told Vogue. "I want this to be like a Cindy Crawford thing: I want it to last until I am her age," she went on.

If you ask Crawford, Jenner has exactly what it takes to do just that. "She's not giving her power away," Crawford said to Vogue about Jenner's staying power. "She's already light-years ahead of where I was at her age."

In fact, Jenner was so set on making sure she was successful based on her talent instead of her lineage that she refused to let any members of her family attend her first fashion show. "I wanted the attention to be on me for five seconds rather than my family," she explained to Allure on her decision to keep her family away from her first show. If you ask anyone who's hired her thus far, it seems like her talent is all they care about. "When we first saw Kendall, we wanted to book her on her merit," Marc Jacobs himself said to Vogue about choosing Jenner to walk his runway. "Not on the fact that she was a Kardashian."

While Jenner's first passion is being in front of the camera, she also loves being behind it. When Vogue asked if she has a secret hobby, Jenner responded, "photography." In true Kardashian businesswoman form, she's even started to turn that hobby into a lucrative career. 

In 2016, she photographed Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia Gerber for LOVE Magazine — and apparently, is great at it! "Working with Kendall was effortless," Gerber told LOVE Magazine. "It just felt like two friends hanging out, snapping a few photos at candid moments."