Modeling, Body Image, and Me.

It was the early school morning of my eighth-grade year. I always weighed myself in the morning, naked with my feet separated and all the air exhaled from my body. I swore if my scale ever blinked a number that was three digits, I would start purging. I have never made myself throw up (save the few drunken nights that spilled Taco Bell into porcelain). For a long while, I hovered at 97lbs. I was fourteen at the time, stunting my own growth and development; I’d be 5’9’’ forever and my boobs would fill out later (and never to my satisfaction). But I broke three digits soon after and could not get myself to force fingers or butter knife down my throat, though the numbers tormented me. My only other option was to throw out my scale, which I did and have always encouraged others to do, too.

Despite what the mouth breathing pre-pubescent boys of my fifth-grade class might have told you, I’ve never been fat. As far as body mass index goes, I’ve never even been overweight. So, yes, I’m well aware of the eyerolls and disbelief with the fact that I have been called “obese” by the very industry that employs me. Up until this point in my career, about seven years in, I’ve always been told that I need to lose weight. Hundreds of hours spent on treadmill, counting calories, and dreading the torture device that is a measuring tape to arrive here with a sailor’s knot of body and self-esteem issues. I don’t consider myself lucky this way.

I can’t pin point where my relationship with food turned sour. I can’t direct you to the red flags or when things started to go south, but I know some of it wasn’t my fault. As women in this society, we are taught to thin ourselves, to disappear into waifs of the muscle and fat we used to be. It’s a silencer, a way to go unnoticed and become noticed altogether and that contradiction is enough to screw most of us up for years to come.

And sure, the industry is changing. On the surface. For money. Because it is successful marketing. Still, there are those who are starving themselves or abusing drugs or jamming their gag reflexes with anything that will stir their full stomachs and all of this in the name of health. Room needs to be made for all shapes and sizes but do not kid yourself to believe this change has happened or is happening overnight. This is a long and arduous road and sometimes I don’t want to walk it.

I have played the game and I have lost. I operated by the rules and was cheated. This is frustrating. To thin myself, to disappear, to starve my body of caloric energy and make way for depression only to lose my job to someone else when the industry is placating a need feels insulting. “You can either lose weight or you can gain it.” “You can be a model or a plus sized model.” Why can’t I be myself? Why can’t I feel good about the body I have? Am I not enough (or little enough) to be accepted?

The questions keep me up at night. Silence is the only answer my mind can sometimes conjure.

If I’m being called fat, what are others being called? If I’m told to lose weight, what do those looking up to me or at me feel like? How do I help?

I help by talking about it. I help by attempting to be seen. I help by eating and being healthy (or attempting to be healthy because God knows if you cut me open, hot sauce and Red Bull would probably spill out.). You cannot sell health when you are unhealthy. Not only is it not fair, it is unethical.

There were months when I couldn’t look at my body in the mirror. There were years when I couldn’t consume a piece of food without looking at the nutritional label and dissecting my entire day around it. My relationship with food and my body will always be something I have to labor over. It changes constantly but is overbearing to my thoughts. I have worn a size 00 and a size 8 within a two-year span and still have never been fat. I hope to one day arrive at a station where I can be content, when I don’t overthink spaghetti or a donut or count my calories back as I tuck myself into bed.

Sometimes I really regret my decision to enter the modeling industry. I had once dreamed with a twinkle in my eye that I could change it. I would breathe life into the pressing issues, I would rock my cellulite and my tummy and the industry would eat me up, but most of the time I’m chewed and spit out or passed up altogether. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to care less and less. I’m healthy. I’m happy. I live for the hope that one day all of these body and food issues will be put to rest and I will bring my glorious body into Taco Bell and order whatever I want before I haul my thighs that rub together like hands preceding a magic trick to a photoshoot for Maybelline or some powerhouse brand. One can dream, right?

There is room in this industry for all shapes and sizes because all shapes and sizes exist. I do not want to contribute to the poor self-esteem of others (especially young girls because damn, there’s enough of soul crushing garbage out there as it is). I do not want to become bitter with my own rejections or push blame onto others. I can only change myself and my own attitude, which I have been valiantly attempting to do. Our bodies are strong and capable and miraculous. Let’s start there.