My Story In The Modelling Industry
One of the most toxic industries when it comes to body image and the way women see themselves.
I’d like to share a part of my transformational story with you.
The topic of body-issues has been a big subject in my healing process, so perhaps it may inspire you.
As most of you know, I’ve been working as an international model since the tender age of seventeen. I’m now thirty-seven. That means, for nineteen years, I’ve been influenced by one of the most toxic industries when it comes to body image and the way women see themselves.
I’ve seen and heard it all.
I’ve been shamed and criticized for the shape of my body innumerable times. I’ve stepped into high-ranking agencies where I was measured to the centimetre from head to toe and declared too fat in front of seven bookers. I’ve been sent home from a job because I was too thin. I’ve been called a ‘lazy model who doesn’t work out’ while I exercised almost every day of the week. I’ve been promised a glorious career if I only lost three more centimeters around my already tiny waist. I’ve lived in model flats with girls who ate paper or only crackers for weeks in a row. I’ve been picked up by my new model boss in Paris, who took me to his rooftop balcony, laid down on his sunbed, and asked me to strip down to my thong so he could see what my body looked like (which I refused, btw). I’ve been pinched in my legs by my Italian booker, who screamed, ‘Prosciutto, prosciutto!’ (ham, ham! in Italian).
I could go on and on.
When I was young, my family and I moved from the freedom of the city to the countryside, to a village where people turned out to be more small-minded.
I’ve always been a strong girl, but when I joined the new primary school, I was bullied and teased for looking artsy, wearing bindis on my third eye, and being an expressive child. I was also a smart girl and good at sports.
Fast-forward to my teens – I became a rebellious teenager with an urge to roam.
When I left my parents’ home at age seventeen to model in Milan, there was a part of me that still felt like the young country schoolgirl who was bullied and made to feel ‘too weird’ and ‘not pretty.’ It was a small part, but she was there.
And so, after four years of modelling, at age twenty, I started developing eating disorders.
For four years, I experienced the entire spectrum of eating disorders and nobody knew. I suffered from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and constant belly aches. I pushed myself into the skinniest of skinny jeans and drank wine to cover my struggle.
Why? Because I was ‘fine’.
Of course, I wasn’t fine. I was numb. I was disembodied. I wanted to scream. But I was ashamed and hadn’t yet met the immense power and beauty of opening up in a vulnerable and embodied manner.
I was scared that if I opened up, I’d lose my job and my dignity.
And so, at age twenty-four, I woke up one morning, got out of bed, and collapsed on the floor. I was so dizzy, I couldn’t tell north from south – kind of like being very drunk and seasick all at once. I lay there for a day until I could get a hold of my phone to call my friend, who is a doctor.
It turned out I had a rare disease called labyrinthitis, an inner ear infection that severely affects balance and causes dizziness. I then had to lie in the dark on one ear for two weeks, without sound and only minimal movement.
There was a plastic spa bottle with a straw tucked between my bed and the mattress that I could reach for and suck on when I was thirsty.
Somehow, I remember that so well. That damn bottle. I wasn’t yet a meditator at the time, so this was very difficult for me.
Yet, it was transformational. It was a gift. Lying there in the dark, I could no longer run from myself.
The doctor could name the illness but not the deeper cause. But I knew. I knew this wasn’t just an illness. It was my body calling me home. I’d spent so long dimming my fire, afraid of its power. But I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Little by little, I chose to listen. I chose to open.
And so, after that illness, I began my real healing process.
It was two steps forward, one step back. But forward I went.
I found a wonderful psychologist, Rien, who taught me the art of not judging myself and of honoring my feelings. I applied for a course in mindfulness. I started dancing more wildly at conscious festivals.
Fast forward to the end of my twenties, I did a ten-day Vipassana retreat – a meditation technique rooted in ancient Buddhist traditions – where we meditated for ten hours a day. I found the medicine of psychedelic mushrooms and Ayahuasca. I discovered embodiment, breathwork, Yoga, and later on, Tantra.
Over the years, I joined better modeling agencies with kinder bookers. I found my mother agency, Touché Models, which changed the course of my career, and I became more successful as a model.
My disordered eating transmuted into a way of nourishing myself – I began cherishing organic, high-vibrational food and cooking with love. My approach to exercise shifted from pushing and over-exercising to listening to what my body truly needed.
I decided that whenever that negative voice resurfaced, I’d choose again. I’d choose a new thought, rooted in love.
My healing is an ongoing process and that old self-criticism still pops up here and there.
These days, whenever the little artsy girl with the bindi gets afraid, I tell her that she’s uniquely beautiful, and I give her the love she needs but didn’t receive.
Was food the issue? Was my body the issue? Was modelling the issue? No. It’s never the food. It’s never our body. The issue was what was underneath it.
Controlling our bodies with endless exercise and calorie-counting masks a pain we haven’t faced yet. For me, the voice of being thin began to morph with the voice of being worthy, successful, and loved. That’s where it got muddy.
There was that little dark, unhealed part of me that wanted to fit in, to prove she was unique and beautiful, that she was ultimately worthy of love. A yearning for free expression, to be seen. A need to be loved. And this is what we need to feel into.
If you’ve experienced or are experiencing any type of body-dysmorphia, disordered eating, or even subtle negative self-talk when you pass a mirror, then you know these wounds run deep.
Perhaps you haven’t touched the same shadows I encountered in the modelling world, but what I've found is that most women in our society have their own version of dealing with rejection toward their own bodies.
Perhaps my story has inspired you that even the ‘pretty, thin girls’ – the models – are just as insecure about their bodies, if not more. That becoming thinner, rounder, or smoother never truly hits home. It never ends. There is always younger, firmer, musclier. It’s not the answer.
Perhaps my sharing has resonated with a force in you that tells you it’s time. That you can heal, love, honor, and enjoy your body. I did it. And so can you. It’s completely possible.