Love your body!

With modelling, the one issue that always comes to mind is body image. Too skinny, too fat, too short, too tall. I have personally heard pretty much all of them, from all different sorts of people. 

I would say my body is 'averagely thin'. My hips are 92 cm on average which is deemed too large by the 'big' agencies and some clients, but I have gotten them down to 88 before which is the 'ideal'. This is the iridescent issue with models and the first thing that happens when you meet a new agency - their measuring tape finds its way loosely around the largest part of your hips and usually resides at 90cm or above, if you are above the age of sixteen. I know it is a huge issue for girls in other agencies, and was something I went through for a long time with a previous agency, however luckily my current one have never explicitly told me to lose weight. I have lost weight myself, for one particular client, but it was because I was very motivated to do so and I did it by eating healthily and exercising. 

Personally, I would much rather buy clothes off a girl who is more 'normal' sized - who has a body that will fill out jeans, no thigh gap and who is most importantly, happy. Happy because they aren't being hauled in to be measured every week, suffering under constant emotional pressure leading them to resort to unhealthy methods - happy because they are just allowed to be who they naturally are. As a 22 year old woman, I can honestly say that I love my body despite the fact that my thighs will always touch, that I cannot fit into size zero couture dresses and my metabolism is slowing down. It keeps me going, my bones have never broken, I have the power to walk and run and do anything I want to. 

This is such an important issue, and one to remember when you see girls in magazines and wonder why despite all of the green juice you have drunk and meals skipped, you don't look like her. It isn't because you have a lack of self control. It's because the girl in the picture doesn't even look like that in reality - she has been photo-shopped to the extreme, and this is after having her hair and make up professionally done, and being professionally styled and photographed in manipulated lighting. 

I think the biggest problem right now is that models are not being accepted at the 'medium' scale that the majority of us naturally gravitate to, There are catwalk models - scarily thin, bones protruding through papery skin - and there are plus size models, who are under as much pressure to stay within their measurement boundaries as the 'thinner' ones. If they are too thin they are deemed 'not plus size' and come under fire. Why can't they just be regular sized - a size 12 is not fat and should not be seen as plus size in any way whatsoever. The average size of a woman in the UK is size 16. Models are ideally a size 8, which is fine for slightly smaller girls, but combined with being six foot tall it can make you look slender erring on the line of ill, if it is not your natural body type. I am a size 8-10 depending on how much chocolate/running I have consumed that week, and I am proud of it. I don't want to be the model that is making others feel bad about themselves, for perpetrating a negative body image that is impossible to healthily maintain myself. I watch what I eat and exercise regularly because of my job, and because it makes me feel good - not to fit in with what someone else is telling me I should look like.

This post is about celebrating the ordinary size of women - whatever that is! If you are naturally skinny, then that is as good for you as being naturally bigger; you should love your body whatever shape it is. Exercise is brilliant, if you are doing it for reasons that make you feel good about yourself, whatever they are. Chocolate is better! Love your body because it is the thing keeping you alive, because it makes you different from everybody else, because you are you and no one can change that. 

This is a really inspirational, interesting video by Dove - definitely worth a watch! 

today was one of those days where you may as well be hungover, because you can't concentrate on anything anyway :( 

I woke up at 7 am, (as usual these days to get in lots of studying!) and had my daily museli breakfast and then just could not concentrate on anything. 
I have read every single article on the daily mail, seen every single item on asos/topshop and followed a LOT of blogs. 

2 articles on the daily mail i found particularly disgusting today:

1. Samantha Brick's article on how basically 'The world admonished Kate Moss for claiming that 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' but I'd go further. As I see it, there is nothing in life that signifies failure better than fat.' which I think is basically disgusting and she is an utterly pathetic woman seeking fame. She also posted this, with the accompanying picture of her husband.. 
'Luckily for me, there is no better weight-loss incentive than a Frenchman. Pascal would not tolerate a fat wife and has told me that if I put on weight, our marriage is over. What more motivation do I need?'

 


I hope for my sake that I do not end up married to a tubby man who would dump me if I got 'fat'. And also that I don't end up as bitter as this woman.

Diets don't work. The only diet that will work is a change in your entire lifestyle. My mum is constantly on diets, and is recently always on at me to lose weight (I am size ten and 5'11) as though it links us together (but thats another story). I think its the worst thing for your parents to tell you in such a harsh way to lose weight, my boyfriend's mum last year said that I had put on loads of weight just randomly over dinner and I burst into tears for hours. I also had the added pressure from a high fashion model agency last year which made me go into the agency every week just to get measured, and be told that 'mmm yeah you have put on a cm this week so when you lose it we will give you work again'. That is also another story, and not for right now.

So basically, Samantha Brick, we don't need to think that there lies nothing ahead but endless days of dieting, of skipping meals and 'enjoying' the hunger pains that accompany it. Last year I tried this when I was under immense pressure and ended up putting more on. This year I have started eating three healthy meals a day and doing a work out in my bedroom for half an hour (most) days and I can already notice the difference after a week. You need to keep your metabolism high. If you want ice cream, eat it but don't skip the rest of the day's meals because all your body will take in is that ice cream and turn it into fat.

The second daily mail article that made me sick today was this - an article about model's cellulite because of their 'bad diet, smoking and no exercise' which is a massive generalisation.
They don't even know the model herself, but posted a picture of her walking down the runway with the TINIEST wobble in her leg. I'm not going to repost it because it makes me sick that people are zooming in on her size zero body and looking for flaws, when she is probably seriously insecure anyway. She must be pretty humiliated at that article - and I bet her agency know about it.

I have experienced a lot in my 7 years of modeling, only subjected to the weight criticism and all the other nasty things myself in the past year. When 'newspapers' start posting articles like this it is just degrading to women and inspire Samantha Brick to write endless drivel.

If a size zero (the absolute maximum size for a catwalk model is six) model is being subjected to such criticism, how are the rest of us supposed to feel? The Daily Mail is misogynistic and I honestly don't know how it exists as a newspaper today.

Unfortunately I still can't stop myself from reading it - it is a vice I have :( but mainly to look at the comments! And sometimes we are interested in what some reality show participant you have never heard of wore out clubbing last monday in her hometown, when revision gets really really bad.