If the images you saw in magazines, on television or on the internet looked more like you would you feel more confident about your body?
Growing up I was a chubby kid, and unfortunately endured teasing because of this. I always felt bigger than everybody, taller and just different. The only images I saw in media did not look like me and all the woman around me were trying to look like those images. My freshman year of college I saw a booth for a hair show. Everyone always told me how beautiful my hair was and I was broke and needed a haircut. At the hair show I felt out of place once again as none of their clothes fit me and all the girls were thin and stunning. But that hair show was to be the turning point in my life. After that experience, I became a plus-sized model and for the first time my height, size and hair was exactly what they were looking for. While modeling, I became a personal trainer and merged my love for sports with my passion for health. I had a couple clients that were aspiring models and I realized how dangerously thin they were required to be. As I vented to my husband and asked questions like, is it the designers requiring these models to be this thin? Agencies? The consumers? My husband replied, “Well what are you going to do about it?” It was at that moment that I became hard at work to make a change, maybe it was for myself in a way. Remembering myself as a little girl and not feeling pretty enough or thin enough.
So, I decided to create the Model Diet Documentary (Note: clip is not consistent with NEDA’s community guidelines and may be triggering to some viewers), which chronicles an aspiring model, talks with past and present models about the industry, asks girls how they feel about their bodies and most importantly looks to inspire people to love and be comfortable in the body they were given.
Aren’t you tired of thinking about dieting and worrying about body parts you aren’t comfortable with? I want girls, woman and boys to feel more comfortable in their bodies and my hope is that the standard size in fashion starts accommodating the average body type of the clothing consumer. Everyone has a cause that they feel strongly about and this is my cause. What’s yours?
