If you want to know what it’s “really” like to be a plus-size model, check out my interview with Stephanie Shi for Cosmopolitan Philippines! Here’s a peek:
What do plus-size models have to do in order to maintain their size and shape? What do they have to do to be bigger? In your case, when you were asked to move up to a size 14 from a size 10, what would you have had to do to get there?
There is an assumption that these women have undisciplined bodies or don’t diet and exercise. The reality is that these women work hard for their bodies. At times, they engage in severe bodily management practices, such as strict calorie restriction to drop a size and even binge eating to gain a size. Models have to adapt to changing ideals. If your size isn’t in demand, do you radically transform your body, or do you wait for the trends to shift?
The act of losing weight for plus-size models is interesting, because by losing weight these women are conforming to a general cultural expectation for women; yet, within the modeling world, they are told that they did a bad thing. One model I interviewed really struggled with her unplanned weight loss that altered her dimensions dramatically and she lost clients because she was not hired for her perfect body but, rather, for her consistent body.
At the moment when I started hearing, “You have to be a size 14,” I did feel pressure to change. But that was also what prompted me to step back and say, “Okay, I’m done.” I didn’t want to have to change my body at someone’s beck and call. I couldn’t maintain my body and size and dimensions at that strict level—it was too much pressure.
Read the entire interview here.
Amanda M. Czerniawski 