I was a size 6 model and looked 'half dead' but I was still told to lose weight: How the industry has barely changed since the days of 'heroin chic'

Daily Mail​

09-07-2025

On the surface modelling is more inclusive than it's ever been. The hottest models on the catwalk right now are Anok Yai, a South Sudanese-American model, and Alex Consani, another American who is transgender. As wonderfully diverse as this is, it doesn't hide the fact that the industry has gone backwards when it comes to body positivity.
Both Yai and Consani are super slim, along with nearly every other model signed to the top agencies – some of them unhealthily so. I know from personal experience what cruel fate awaits a model who fails to achieve this unnatural level of thinness.
I thought it was a practical joke when I was first scouted to be a model at a music festival aged 14. Surely, they wanted someone prettier? But it wasn't a joke, and I went home that evening, buzzing with the exhilaration of a new possibility.
I scoured over every copy of Vogue I had, imagining that to be me one day. Skip forward a couple of years after endless visits to the agency, I had officially signed onto its books, and was off to a fitting at Vogue itself. Being a young model initially felt incredibly exciting and everything it's cut out to be. At first, the agency puts all its attention on you, making you feel like the best thing since Kate Moss. In reality, the chance you'll make it into the big league of modelling is one in a million. For a start, to make it big you must have the 'it factor' and probably be a size 4. When I finally realised this, it all went downhill.
That's not to say there weren't amazing moments in my career, from modelling for Burberry to working on smaller creative photoshoots. The commercial side paid the best.
I worked with a well-known retail brand in their showroom in Paris back in 2023. I was 19. It was the first time I had left the country by myself, but while daunted I wore my mask of confidence. However, I was left shocked when they asked me to go and fetch another model to wear the outfit meant for me, because they needed someone 'skinny', especially as I'd spent the previous year dieting at the request of my agency.
In fact, sample sizes in general were a huge issue. On another shoot, they struggled to get the dress onto my body, even though my waist was 23 inches and my hips 30 inches – below even industry standard. My mental strength began to ebb away.
Modelling had initially made me feel I possessed some sort of beauty, but this feeling soon seeped away, and the steady downfall of my self-confidence began. I never felt skinny enough, even though in reality I was probably too thin. My energy was constantly depleted, and I obsessively compared myself with other models. People around me would make jokes about my agency loving me to look 'half dead' all the time; like a vampire I would hide from the sun and exaggerate my dark circles. I never met a model that wasn't sniffing coke before a show or a shoot, and I never met a designer that wasn't obsessed with touching you when they didn't need to, or an agent that didn't want an already stick thin girl to 'lose a few'.
From the outside, you might think the modelling industry has changed a lot since the skeletal models of the 1990s, but that's not the case. People in my life would tell me I was lucky to be born long after the 'heroin chic' era, but it felt like I was still in it. While the industry picked up on the body positivity movement in the 2010s, and occasionally moved away from using dangerously slim models, I believe it was purely performative. It certainly didn't last long; and now uber-skinny is being perpetuated even more with the rise of Ozempic use among celebrities and influencers. Who best to represent that than the traditional 'epitome' of beauty?
During the last meeting with my agency in November 2024, they warned me that they would have to drop me because I was no longer a size 6 and my hips had naturally gotten bigger with age. The irony was, to everyone else I was still tiny. Being told that those two inches meant so much, I felt worthless. I still do sometimes. I was offered the potential opportunity to move up to the agency's 'curve' (plus sized) board. For a split second, I contemplated it, but considering everyone in my life did and still does view me as thin, I realised it would be an insult to all the beautiful women in the plus sized division if I stood next to them looking absolutely nothing like them.
In fact, I yearned to look more like the non-stick-thin friends around me, to have a healthy, better-looking body like them. I sometimes look back at pictures of me from that time next to my very healthy friends and feel grateful I have the choice to eat now. I felt as if I was compelled not to before.
I do miss many, many aspects of modelling, the chances to travel it gave me, some of the people I met. The nicest people I met were always stylists, makeup artists, assistants or other models – basically anyone on the lowest end of the hierarchy. I don't miss having no autonomy over my own body, something that's meant to be mine and mine only.
I don't read Vogue anymore; I still feel sickening jealousy for the life that could've been if I'd only lost that little bit more weight, but that's not how you should live life. I can't regret a time when all my waking thoughts were about restricting my living standards to fit into someone else's standards.