Swipe Right for Christie

She’s been the face of Uptown Girl, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit siren of a sun-drenched America, and the impossible standard of ageless beauty. But what happens when Christie Brinkley—yes, that Christie—gets swiped into the same digital dating pool as your friend’s divorced uncle looking for a “travel buddy”?

This week, we learned something deliciously modern and oddly medieval: Christie’s own daughter, Sailor Brinkley-Cook, put her on a dating app. Not as a joke, but with intention. “She needs someone adventurous,” Sailor said, “someone who still has a lust for life.” It’s the kind of well-meaning ambush only a Millennial daughter could stage—equal parts loving and disruptive, like ordering a salad for someone who didn’t ask.

The Algorithm Wears Lipstick

Dating apps have become the new mirrors. They reflect not who we are, but how we want to be perceived—cropped, filtered, tidied. For Christie Brinkley, who has long been seen as beauty’s final word, entering the algorithm is more than just a date night stunt. It’s a cultural tremor. She is not hiding behind her fame, but offering herself up to strangers with bios and prompts and emojis, just like the rest of us.

And yet, isn’t that the fantasy? That someone who once romanced Billy Joel and danced through MTV’s golden age might now field messages from men named “Jim-from-Nantucket” with three dog pics and a passion for grilling. The algorithm flattens fame. On the app, you’re not Christie Brinkley. You’re 70, divorced, and “looking for something real.”

That’s either terrifying or thrilling, depending on how many decades you’ve spent being desired.

Daughters, Mothers, and the Politics of Reinvention

Sailor’s act wasn’t just playful—it was political. A young woman giving her mother permission to remain visible, wanted, even romanticized. Not as nostalgia, but as possibility. “She deserves someone to have fun with,” Sailor said, offhandedly, like she was describing a friend who needed a long weekend in Tulum.

But that’s what makes it radical. In a world where aging women are often nudged toward invisibility—unless they’re packaging collagen or peddling wellness—this small gesture felt subversive. There is no age where longing stops. Only a culture that decides when it’s no longer marketable.

If anything, Sailor is tapping into something bigger than a dating profile: the idea that older women should not just age gracefully, but love brazenly. Because why should youth monopolize chaos and chemistry?

And maybe that’s the most poetic part. That even icons get lonely. That even legends need introductions.

Because who really belongs on a dating app? Everyone and no one.

And maybe, just maybe, Christie Brinkley.