Carl's Jr. Model Charlotte McKinney Opens Up About Being Bullied
McKinney dropped out of high school after struggling with dyslexia
— -- Charlotte McKinney sky-rocketed to international fame overnight Sunday as the star of a racy Super Bowl ad for Carl’s Jr., a fast food chain.
This morning, the 21-year-old says she is still taking it all in.
“It’s been crazy,” McKinney told ABC News. “I haven’t had time to wrap my head around it but I’m just excited and grateful.”
The commercial, which shows McKinney eating a hamburger while scantily dressed, now has more than 8 million views online. Two of the people who have seen the racy commercial include McKinney’s parents.
“He loved it,” McKinney said of her father. "He’s super proud of me and my parents have been behind me all the way.”
McKinney’s position in the company of stars like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Kate Upton, who have all also starred in Carl’s Jr.’s ads, is a long way from Florida, where she grew up and dropped out of high school at the age of 17.
McKinney says she struggled with dyslexia and was bullied in high school.
“Just girls being girls and getting in a clique,” McKinney said of the bullying. “I didn’t have too many girlfriends and so they saw me as a target and they went for it.”
McKinney says she overcame being self-conscious of her curves and learned to embrace them, getting her big modeling break last year with an ad campaign for Guess.
The model also scored a part in the upcoming film “Joe Dirt 2” and says she was happy to make her Super Bowl splash with an all-natural look.
“When I found out it was the ‘all-natural’ burger, I was so happy to be a part of that,” she said. “My whole life was, ‘She got a boob job,’ so it was nice to be like, ‘No, I’m going all natural.'"