If you haven't heard of Elizabeth Pipko by now, we can almost guarantee it won't be long until you do. At just 20 years old, she's already accomplished more than most do in a lifetime — and she has no plans of stopping. Not only is she a beautiful, young woman with an extremely popular Instagram, but she's been featured in several magazines, is an athlete and is extremely talented. Basically, Pipko is the whole package, and there's so much more to her than just what you see on the outside. HNGN had the chance to sit down with Pipko to learn 10 fascinating things everyone should know about her!
1. Pipko's A Successful Model
Pipko is mostly known for her photographs, as they all come out stunning, but it wasn't her original plan to get into the modeling business. In fact, it only started a few years ago. "It was kind of a freak accident," she told HNGN exclusively. "My mom was walking our dog in the park, and an amazing photographer was having a shoot there and she asked to borrow our dog for the shoot. To return the favor to my mom, she did a small shoot with me, sent the photos to a big agency and it kind of just went from there."
She never thought she'd be as into this career path as she is, but she loves everything about it. "I get to meet amazing people, and get to see a different side of myself that I never imaged," she explained. "Being able to see myself in a different light and doing amazing things, that's what I love. I get to experience amazing things that most people my age don't get to experience."
2. Pipko Has More Than 75,000 Instagram Followers
At such a young age, this is a pretty impressive accomplishment, especially since the numbers keep growing by the day. While her huge following definitely helps her modeling career, she wouldn't necessarily give it all the credit. "It is really important in today's age, though," she said. "It is a big deal, but it's the last thing I ever expected. I look at other people with millions and millions of followers and I still have a long way to go before I'm at the level I want to be at, but it's very exciting considering where I started."
3. Pipko Was In Sports Illustrated
Back in July, the popular magazine chose her as its "Lovely Lady of the Day." "Elizabeth Pipko is a model who should be on your radar," wrote SI, who put up a huge gallery of gorgeous and exotic photos of Pipko, which was a huge hit. She even shared a quick secret with Sports Illustrated saying her favorite food is French fries — even though she knows her coach wouldn't love that answer. "Just between you and I — and the Sports Illustrated audience!" she joked.
4. Pipko Is A Figure Skater
She started figure skating when she was 10 years old and has been in love with it ever since. Now, she's pursuing one of her goals: training for the Olympics. In fact, Pipko trains six to seven days a week for a few hours at a time, and that's not including the time she spends in the gym and dance studio.
When asked what she loved most about the sport, she said: "I wish I had a normal answer for this, but I don't. It just completes me. When I'm on the ice, it feels like I'm doing the right thing."
5. Pipko Is Not Letting A Nasty Injury Stand In The Way Of Her Dream
"I was practicing jumps on the floor, actually, which skaters do before they attempt them on ice, and I landed on the side of my foot and snapped every ligament, every tendon, and bruised every bone in my ankle," she revealed. "It's been a really long recovery. That was a few years ago, but it's definitely still bothering me and something I face and need to deal with every single day. But it's not anything that's going to stop me."
6. Pipko Uses What She’s Learned From Figure Skating To Help Her With Modeling And Vice Versa
While figure skating and modeling are completely different, there are plenty of lessons learned in each that help her be so successful with the other one. “When I started modeling, I think it was everything I learned in skating about believing in myself and just being a competitor that helped me through a lot of things in modeling that no one knows models deal with,” she explained. “And same with modeling — it helped me feel beautiful and learn my body and all these things that definitely help on the ice.” Going from one to the other can also be a little difficult, especially when she has to do them both in one day, but she always finds a way to put together all she’s learned over the years to make it work.
7. Pipko Is A Harvard Student
As if juggling figure skating and modeling wasn’t hard enough, she’s currently enrolled in one of the most prestigious and difficult schools in the country: Harvard. She took a year off between high school and college to focus on figure skating and recuperating from her injury, but got right back to studying every single day. She majors in religious studies and is double minoring in math and legal studies.
“I don’t sleep, that’s for sure,” she joked when asked how she manages to study all three subjects. “It’s really hard, but again, even that helps me because of the confidence you gain. Everything you gain is knowledge that you can’t get anywhere else. Without that, I definitely wouldn’t be the person I am. And I don’t think I’d want to be growing up in this world and not learning while I’m doing all these other things.”
8. Pipko Is All About Breaking Typical Model Stereotypes
People have a hard time believing that a model could be an athlete and a Harvard student because that’s not the typical stereotype, but she’d never let that stand in her way and feels amazing to break that stereotype. “I feel like models everywhere break stereotypes,” she said. “People look at us as pretty people who don’t know anything, but in reality, models are some of the most down to earth, confident and real people that you’ll ever meet.”
She encourages young girls aspiring to be models to go to college because she thinks it is very important. "I will admit that I argued with my parents every day and had no interest in going," she said about going back to school. "But once I started, I knew that I was not going to stop and it actually became really important to me."
9. Pipko Speaks Three Languages
And she's working on a fourth! Pipko currently speaks Hebrew, Russian and English fluently, and has been taking classes for four years now to learn to speak Chinese.
10. Pipko Is A Published Writer
A few years ago, Pipko published a book, "Sweet Sixteen," and has plans to publish two more. On top of this, she has a ton of plans for her future. "I would love to continue modeling as long as I can, to be looked at as a top model and to go down in history. That'd be amazing," she said. "I'd also, of course, love to win the Olympic games, as any athlete would, and to, hopefully, finish school with straight As. I have a lot of things that I'd like to experience. Right now, what I have is enough, though. I like to be the best at everything I do so, hopefully, once I accomplish all of this, I will find more to do."
When asked if she had any words of wisdom for other young girls aspiring to be models or achieve anything like this with their lives, Elizabeth had some amazing things to say. "Believe in yourself," she advised. "You are going to hear so many people telling you about all these things that are wrong with you, and that you can't make it, and why you shouldn't try, because people are going to try to stand in your way with everything you do. But if you believe in yourself, than you're one step closer than so many others."
