It’s easy to dismiss models as a pretty face and nothing more. Their job is to look good. And though Tyra may try to convince the general public that good models have an A+ personality to go along with their A+ looks, it’s easy to forget when faced with Daria’s striking cheekbones, Jessica’s stunning eyes and Chanel Iman’s perfect lips peering up at you from the pages of magazines.

However, many models are as accomplished as they are beautiful. Brooke Shields is a graduate of Princeton. Our lovely Tyra has turned herself into a brand with two hugely successful television shows. And in a recent profile of Carla Bruni in the New York Times, we learned that this former model speaks three languages and won a Grammy for her first album (written and recorded in French, although her native language is Italian). Not to shabby for someone who has been on the cover of over 250 magazines.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Young models are flown all around the world and exposed to people and places that they might never have seen had they chosen a different career. In a foreign country, every waking moment is an education.

The fashion world is hugely multinational and forces a mingling of cultures and traditions and languages that it’s impossible not to learn something along the way. Fine…maybe some of these girls won’t receive perfect scores on their entrance examinations for university, but that’s really only one type of knowledge.

They may be two-dimensional in an editorial, but in real life they most certainly are not!