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NEW YORK -- For an angel, Heidi Klum sure is flashing a devilish grin.
She's backstage shooting promos for the 10th Victoria's Secret fashion show, due to tape in a few hours here at the New York State Armory.
"What's sexy?" she purrs into the camera.
Of course, with the 32-year-old German supermodel doing the asking, it's a rhetorical question.
The show, airing Tuesday (CBS, 10 p.m. ET/PT), marks Klum's seventh strut down the lingerie-laden runway. "The last time I did the show, I was four months pregnant with my first child," daughter Leni, 1 1/2, Klum says. "Now I'm two babies later" -- and, only two months after delivery of No. 2, Henry. (Dad is Klum's husband, Seal, who performs Crazy in the show.)
Klum is one of those genetic wonders who doesn't shy away from starch. For her first five weeks after she gave birth, she lost about a pound a day naturally. (She is breastfeeding.)
It was only during crunch time -- the three weeks leading up to the show's taping -- that crunches became necessary.
Klum credits her trainer of four years, David Kirsch, with helping return her frame to its bikini-friendly form. Her only visible vestige of pregnancy is a faint vertical line running down her stomach.
Downstairs in the makeup room, among a gaggle of leggy models (the show stars 28 in all, including Tyra Banks in her last Victoria's Secret appearance), Kirsch is "delirious," and it's not because the room is cramped and hot. "There she is! There's my girl!" he exclaims, beaming.
Klum is wearing a credential that reads, "Talent." That she is, especially considering she has managed to parlay modeling into something much more. She hosts and executive-produces Bravo's Emmy-nominated Project Runway. (Season 2 premieres Wednesday.) And she's fronting and producing the new Germany's Next Top Model, a European version of Banks' show.
Back upstairs, the now-angelic Klum prepares for a trial strut down the runway in 4-inch stilettos. It's all the more treacherous with the snowlike sequins dusting the catwalk, and the fact that her wings are strapped on like a "really, really heavy backpack," she says.
No matter. Somehow, amid all these obstacles, Klum is able to flutter down the runway like a parade float.
Now that, many would say, is sexy.
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