A week after the call from the assistant, I boarded a downtown subway to the modeling agency. As the subway car zipped past station after station, I clutched my bag in nervous anticipation of the meeting. My bag held the additional snapshots the agency had requested that my roommate took of me in a haphazard photo shoot in our living room a couple of days before. A flurry of thoughts filled the darkness of the underground—Will this meeting end like the last? Was this a foolhardy idea doomed to fail?
When I emerged on street level from the depths of the subway station, I quickly found the office building and then backtracked to a drug store around the corner. When I went to auditions as a child actor, my mom and I rode into the city on the commuter rail system, hopped on the subway, and then stopped at any fast-food restaurant within the vicinity of the audition location for a cup of standard, orange pekoe tea and small fries. (This was before coffee shops replaced the ubiquitous fast food joint on every Manhattan city block.) It became our ritual that helped me to mentally distance myself from the stresses of the school day and prepare myself for the audition. On this day, I was too nervous for a cup of tea and simply wanted to inconspicuously check my hair and makeup.
I returned to the building promptly at 11:15 a.m. for my 11:30 a.m. appointment and rode the elevator up to the agency’s suite. When the doors opened, a rush of sights and sounds did not greet me as in the last agency. Instead, the décor was rather sparse. A mere potted plant and a stand-alone air purifier accented the off-white walls of the reception area. The receptionist handed me some paperwork to fill out and directed me to a pair of chairs against the opposite wall. I waited, again.
I was sitting in the center of daily operations for this mid-sized agency, which employed up to eight modeling agents. Agents swirled about the facility, scampering from one office to another, often pausing at reception to chat with the young woman answering the phones or pick up bundles of mail. From my seat, I heard an agent haggle over the phone with a client about an upcoming television commercial. Another complained to a client about a delayed payment. The constant chatter and underlying buzz from the air purifier lulled me into a state of complacency such that I had not noticed that an hour had passed. Finally, I was called into the director’s office.
I entered. On a desk in front of me were piles of photos and proof sheets. To my left, shelves displaying the faces of dozens of plus-size models with ruby lips and smoky eyes stared down at me. These were the director’s “girls”; they were his business. I wanted my picture up on that wall.
Having failed to learn from my previous interaction with a modeling agent, I was caught off guard by a lack of personal introduction. Instead, in rapid-fire succession, Bobby, the director, detailed my fate as a plus-size model while he visually sized me up aloud:
You’re cute and have a good personality but a bit small for plus. We start at [size] fourteen but you may be right for fit and commercial [modeling]. You have good eyes, teeth, and well proportioned . . . You will have to maintain your shape . . . Besides fit modeling, you could do showroom and commercial print for catalogues, cute little articles in magazines like Marie Claire, and commercials like Verizon . . . You are more of the Banana Republic look . . . classier, sophisticated.
At some point during his verbal tirade, I reckoned this was a sales pitch to tantalize my model dreams, throwing me candy bits with recognizable retailers and markets to bait me. As much as I tried to sell myself to this agent, he tried to sell his services to me. I felt relieved that Bobby, a fashion insider, thought I might have a future in modeling. The first agency open call left me discouraged, but now I was hopeful, my confidence bolstered. His positive evaluation of my body and “look” was the validation I needed to pursue this adventure. I could do this.
Before agreeing to work with me on a freelance basis, Bobby required that I “test,” i.e., have photos taken by a professional fashion photographer to see how I perform in front of a camera and acquire high-quality photos for my portfolio. After the test shoot, we would meet again to discuss my modeling future and “get rolling.” He handed me a photographer’s business card and directed me out the door. My modeling journey had officially begun.
The nature of modeling work suggests that models are different from the general population. Compounding the difficulty of working under the conditions of impersonality, objectification, and necessary corporal discipline, plus-size models face additional scrutiny due to the negative cultural view of fat. While Erving Goffman’s view of stigma suggests that fat women would be more inclined to cover up their curves and excess flesh, these women chose to enter a field where they publicly parade their fat bodies for a discerning public. Essentially, it is this very courage to flaunt their bodies that sets plus-size models apart from traditional, straight-size models. These women shed a penetrating layer of shame and guilt built up over the years to reveal a new, confident self that was no longer afraid to enjoy her size and shape. These plus-size models broke with conventional interpretations of their social identity by flaunting their fat bodies in hopes of changing the cultural discourse.1
The typical routes to enter into plus-size modeling include the former straight-size model, the performer, the outsider, and the self-promoter. In the first type, a straight-size model discovered plus-size modeling after she failed to maintain a thin physique. As plus size, she tends to inhabit the smaller end of the size spectrum. In the second, a non-model working in entertainment booked a modeling job because of their status as a performer and then continued modeling after that initial experience. In the third, a fashion insider recruited a woman without any previous modeling experience. In the fourth, a woman entered the field of her own volition without the aid of a network connection. As my own case demonstrates, this is possible but requires a great deal of determination and luck to acquire contacts. Success, by any route, is rare.
Some of today’s top earning plus-size models began their modeling careers as straight-size models. Crystal Renn’s career trajectory is a prime example of this route. After struggling to maintain weight as a straight-size model by exercising for eight hours a day, Crystal transitioned to plus-size modeling:
You know, I was so happy for once, and I was really comfortable in who I was. You know, whereas before, I was completely unhappy, and you know, scared and insecure. It was a whole different me . . . I really learned—it took me six years, but I learned to be who I was.2
Livia’s story is another example of this transition. While working as a size seven fit model in Los Angeles, Livia’s body “gave up” on her due to hunger and dehydration, so she decided to move to New York, where she discovered plus-size modeling. Clarissa, too, switched to plus-size modeling after a couple of, self-described, unsuccessful years as a straight-size model:
I was told my boobs were too big, my hips too wide. I wasn’t booking work and trying to lose [weight] wasn’t working . . . I stopped fighting my body and found a new career in plus[-size modeling].
As a size fourteen commercial print model, Clarissa booked more jobs than when she was a smaller size.
In their first stints as models, these formers tried to maintain a thin model body type to the detriment of their own health and emotional well-being, exacerbated by the pressures of working alongside pre-teen models with extraordinarily high metabolisms. They felt like failures as their bodies changed despite their best efforts. Livia admitted that she felt uncomfortable with her body as it began to change: “I believed I had to cover myself up. I was ashamed I couldn’t control it [her body] . . . I failed at my job.” These formers tried to mold their bodies to match the thin model expectation; yet, in that very process of losing weight, they gained insecurity and body loathing.
Once these former straight-size models discovered plus-size modeling, they found a place where they embraced their bodies and even modeled alongside straight-size models. “When I stopped trying to fit the mold my agency wanted [as a straight-size model],” Clarissa explained, “I entered a kind of happy place. I made peace with my body.” As plus-size models, their bodies, which no longer fit the normative expectation of a straight-size fashion model, were valued for their natural curves.
Another freelance, size sixteen/eighteen model, Janice, agreed with the sentiments of the formers:
Despite all the problems in this [modeling] industry, I’m rewarded for being myself. I’m grateful for there to be such an industry. I’m honored to take part in this field where I can potentially change minds about beauty.
She was thankful for the opportunity to work in a field where she could be herself in her fat body. Janice fell within the second type of recruitment—performance artists, such as actors and singers, who were offered modeling work and then decided to pursue additional modeling opportunities. Primarily an actor, Janice earned the much-coveted SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card from, to her own disbelief, booking a modeling commercial. A self-described “chubby” girl, Janice never thought of her body as something useful, let alone something that would bolster her acting career. She understood that to act, she needed to be thinner, but as a plus-size model Janice could be her two hundred-pound self. Armed with the good fortune of receiving union benefits, she focused on auditioning for acting jobs, but admitted that modeling jobs were more lucrative and she intended to continue to model until she got her big acting break.
Lea, too, an accomplished Broadway performer, began working as a size sixteen plus-size model to earn extra money. She regularly worked in showrooms, parading in next season’s designs for fashion buyers. She recalled, “I thought, ‘I might as well try it [modeling].’ And guess what? I was the right size. It worked out, and I have extra cash in my pocket.” Lea did not expect to continue modeling in the long-term. For her, this was a temporary opportunity that turned into a series of reoccurring commercial print jobs, where she modeled clothes for department store circulars.
Gail, a size twenty-two commercial and catalog print model and singer from Boston, also found herself thrust into modeling while on a whim to bolster her other performance-centric career aspirations. A fan of a custom plus-size design label, Gail added the fashion line to her friend list on her social networking page. The owners of the fashion label, after listening to a couple of tracks on her profile page, decided Gail’s style matched that of the fashion’s and asked her to model their latest collection in an upcoming advertising campaign. “It was random,” recalled Gail, “but hopefully this gig will help my career with more publicity and exposure. I may try acting, as well.” Gail signed a contract with the fashion label and divides her time between modeling and music.
Given the similarity between modeling and the performing arts, it is not unreasonable to consider a professional leap from straight-size modeling or acting to plus-size modeling; however, for some women, pursuing a career in modeling involved an unexpected turn of events. In the third type, the outsider, a member of the fashion community—a designer, boutique owner, agent, or another plus-size model—recruited a fat woman into modeling. Unlike the first two types who have experience in being evaluated on the basis of their bodily capital, the outsider may be unfamiliar with the use value of her body and, consequently, need to overcome an initial resistance to hide her fat body.
The majority of the models interviewed in this study were of this third type, the outsider who was urged by others to pursue modeling. While there were those few women who previously worked as straight-size models or in other related performance fields and then transitioned into plus-size modeling, most of the women entered the field by chance. Whether scouted by an agent, recruited by a designer or boutique owner to model fashions, or approached by another plus-size model, these women were introduced to plus-size modeling through someone connected to the industry. For example, size fourteen/sixteen model Stephanie was approached by a makeup artist while she was clothes shopping:
I was in the checkout line, just chatting, when she suggested I try plus[-size] modeling. I hadn’t thought about it before but she made me think. If an established professional in the biz says I should do it, why not?
In ethnographic studies focused on cultural producers within an aesthetic economy, researchers found that a greater proportion of fashion models were “discovered” by agents at random and others entered the field by chance.3
This was the case of size fourteen freelance model Becky, who, while shopping, was approached by the owner of a Connecticut plus-size boutique to participate in a showcase:
A woman just came up to me and asked me to model the clothes in a fashion show for the store. I figured since I already wear these clothes, it wouldn’t hurt. . . . Of course, I was nervous, but it turned out fun. I guess I can say that I am now hooked.
That first taste of the modeling experience enticed Becky enough for her to make the leap to New York City, where she attended modeling workshops to learn how to walk the runway and pursued other modeling opportunities. Grateful for the introduction to modeling by that boutique owner, Becky confessed, “If she hadn’t approached me, I wouldn’t know that I could model. It’s not something I could’ve imagined.”
Similar to the hesitation I experienced while waiting to see the agent at my first open call, these outsiders, like Becky, were initially unsure or simply unaware of their place in the fashion industry before an insider showed them the way. Size sixteen/eighteen model Joelle began modeling after attending an open modeling call with her friend who worked as a plus-size model:
At first, I didn’t want to go because of my body issues. She basically dragged me to the casting. But it was the best thing I could’ve done for myself . . . After the casting, I saw myself differently. I looked around the room and saw a group of plus beauties. I belonged. “I could do that,” I thought to myself. I really did believe it . . . Finally, I appreciated my body instead of hiding from it.
Mary, too, was recruited by another working plus-size model who urged her to pursue a modeling career. “I was shocked by the suggestion,” she admitted. “I thought only anorexic girls modeled . . . I spent so many years hating my body that the idea of selling it was foreign to me.” After a few months of what Mary described as “researching modeling agencies so I don’t get scammed” and essentially “psyching myself up for the challenge,” she approached a few plus-size agencies and eventually signed with one. As a result, she worked steadily for a couple of years as a size fourteen fit model with a few designers. Given the normative expectation of fashion models as young, tall, and thin, it is no wonder that these women had trouble envisioning a place for themselves on the fashion boards. All of these women, who were already in their twenties when they began modeling, were older and larger than the traditional fashion model.
The fourth type, the self-promoter, was a fat woman who entered the field of plus-size modeling of her own volition without a network connection to aid in her pursuit. Without this help, she was left to her own resources, cold calling agencies and sending in blind submissions.
For some women like Willa, modeling was thought to be an unattainable dream, but as Willa discovered, it only took a few courageous steps:
I had been told that I should look into modeling since I was a little girl, but didn’t think anyone would be interested in hiring me. Last year, I finally took a chance and sent my pictures to “Curvy Clothes,” and I’ve been modeling with them ever since.
Willa was considered lucky to have booked a job on her first try. After working steadily as a size fourteen/sixteen catalog model for a reputable plus-size retailer, she signed with an agency specializing in fit modeling and hoped to expand her modeling career. Rachel, who worked as a size eighteen fit model for a few local companies, had a similar start:
I had thought about modeling for quite some time and finally took a chance and entered a contest through a department store to do one of their runway shows. I was put in touch with an agency and have been working since then.
Rachel hoped to expand into commercial print work in the near future.
There are opportunities for those without prior experience to enter the field. Many plus-size fashion labels, from large-scale plus-size retailers like Torrid and IGIG to smaller, independent labels like the one in Gail’s case, recruited models directly from their customer base by advertising model searches online on their retail websites. Using actual customers without previous modeling experience as models in advertising campaigns is an increasingly popular trend in retail. Besides plus-size retailers, Abercrombie & Fitch and American Apparel regularly use store employees in their advertisements. Casting calls, themselves, can be an opportunity for a sale. At an open modeling call where I met Gail, the owners of the fashion label were selling t-shirts and tickets for a raffle, where the prize was the option to buy any item in the collection for five dollars. The models at the call jumped for a chance at a greatly reduced garment and bought raffle tickets by the handful.
None of the models, whether freelance or represented by an agency, depended upon modeling as their main source of income. At a casting, I met Nicole, a size sixteen, freelance model, who had been modeling for two years and found it difficult to live on her model salary. “Shit,” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t afford my apartment on what they [modeling clients] pay me. That’s why I have a real job.” Her insistence on having a “real” job echoed much of the sentiment expressed by other plus-size models, for whom modeling was a fun opportunity but not income-yielding, reliable work.
Though there were a few plus-size models, such as Crystal Renn, Ashley Graham, Tara Lynn, Fluvia Lacerda, Jennie Runk, and Robyn Lawley, that commanded substantial salaries of up to $10,000 a day and booked national beauty campaigns and runway shows for Elena Miro in Milan, these were rare opportunities. As size fourteen/sixteen model Marilyn explained:
Plus modeling is very competitive. There are less jobs and lots of women vying for them. So, therefore, there are only a handful of plus models that are able to solely support themselves by modeling. Think of how many retailers there are of straight-size clothing—literally thousands. How many plus retailers are there? See what I mean?
With limited paid modeling opportunities, these models sought regular employment outside the fashion field. Some worked in related artistic fields, such as performance, design, or sales, while others held jobs in the healthcare or legal professions as nurses or paralegals, for example. Others worked as personal assistants or in temporary clerical positions, positions that offered flexible hours and accommodating schedules for those last-minute calls about upcoming castings and fittings.
In modeling, success is financial security, but, these extroverted, attention-seeking individuals also find public recognition—fame—desirable. These fashion professionals want to break barriers. During the 1990s, Emme Aronson paved the way for the current generation of models as the first well-known plus-size model. Emme first worked with the now-defunct Plus Models Agency in New York and signed with Ford Models a year later to become their top, highest earning plus-size model.4 She became the first plus-size model to appear in a Times Square billboard with Liz Claiborne’s plus-size line, Elisabeth. In the fall of 1998, Emme made history when she signed a cosmetic endorsement deal with major cosmetic firm Revlon.5 She, along with the likes of Kate Dillon, who was the first plus-size model to appear in an editorial for Vogue magazine, advocated for positive body image and self-esteem by means of publishing books to lecturing youth in high schools and college campuses across the United States:
I have a deep concern for women who wear size fourteen and above. They have no voice. My book and my talks are vehicles to say, “You’re not alone.” Women who’ve read the book call me and cry. It’s the first time they’re hearing a positive, nonbashing message.6
These plus-size model pioneers relished the limited opportunities presented to them in the beginning. Though, as they were unfamiliar with the territory, these models faced challenges. According to Barbara, a director of a plus-size modeling division with more than twenty-five years experience as an agent, the models were “awful” in the beginning because “they couldn’t see past what really could be.” Without examples before them, these plus-size models failed to imagine the possibilities; they struggled to book each job.
This lack of vision was not strictly confined to the models. In creating a plus-size division at a large modeling agency in the 1990s, Barbara faced the challenge of convincing clients to hire her plus-size models. She recalled, “Was there resistance in the beginning? Of course! I was hung up on. People were laughing at the idea [of plus-size models].” She began her plus-size division without a single model. By the second day, Barbara secured her first model and her roster continued to grow. In the early 1990s, there were arguably only a total of fifty plus-size models represented between the three largest modeling agencies in New York. Now, each agency represents fifty to seventy plus-size models.
Despite these early challenges, the agents persevered because they desired to change the industry. “I fell in love with the plus girls,” admitted George, an agent since the early 1990s. “Straight [modeling] had been done. I wanted to break though the barriers in plus. I wanted to get into Vogue, land major contracts. I fell in love with the fight.” Some of these dreams are coming to fruition. In September 2013, Eden Miller showcased six looks from her designer label Cabiria Style—the debut of a plus-size line at New York Fashion Week.7 In October 2013, the fashion capital of the world—Paris—hosted its first Pulp Fashion Week where French designers showcased their plus-size collections.8 Still, these opportunities are few and, like Pulp Fashion Week, often segregated from the main events like Paris Fashion Week. Given the current professional status of plus-size models in the fashion industry, they settle as the faces of designers in the niche of plus size like Lane Bryant, Abby Z., or Monif C., while Target and Wal-Mart pay their bills. “Work is work and money pays the bills,” one agent rationalized.
Beyond financial considerations, success, for these plus-size models, is about personal growth and overcoming their body issues, a position echoed by modeling agents. One agent equated her agency’s success with her models’ happiness and touted that her division is “full of happy girls.” Given cultural opinions on fat, unsurprisingly, most of the plus-size models experienced a period of shame about their bodies at one point or another. Not surprisingly, they, like Livia, covered it up with loose-fitting garments and even attempted to correct their “defect” through diet and exercise. Before modeling, they rarely saw the use-value of a fat body and, like Becky, never imagined that they could work successfully as models due to their size. They honestly believed that their bodies needed to be hidden and covered up. The overall level of body loathing and insecurity present in these women before they entered modeling highlights the effects of stigmatization on fat women. Their fat was their scarlet letter. As with Mary who spent years hating her body, these women initially saw only their unwanted, undesirable fat. Yet, once they discovered plus-size modeling and this built-in community to which they could belong, they, like Clarissa, began to see their bodies in a different light and changed their course of action.
After Dana, a size sixteen runway and showroom model, gave birth to her son, she questioned whether she could continue modeling after the pregnancy; however, her fellow model friends encouraged her to carry on:
My friend told me, “What’s your problem? Put on a great bra and Spanx and you’re ready to go.” She’s right . . . When I came back [after the pregnancy], it was like a family reunion. Everyone wanted to see pictures of my son. Everyone has been so supportive. I love these girls.
It took the support of other similarly motivated and bodied women for Dana to be at ease with her changed body. When all else failed, she was able to find relief in shapewear.
For these women, a reactionary process—of experiencing shame to attempting to cover up their bodies to final acceptance—that involved the actions of an outside force, such as the boutique owner, another plus-size model, or “friending” someone on Facebook, shifted their understanding of fat and beauty. Like Stephanie and the makeup artist or Joelle and her plus-size model friend, these women responded to positive encouragement from the authoritative voice of a fashion insider. Without this encouragement, most of these women would never have imagined modeling as a career option. Thankful to the usher who convinced her that she could be a plus-size model, Janice acknowledged, “It’s nice to be paid for having this body of curves. Too many girls have eating disorders. I want to be another type of example.” These models began as women who entered the field of modeling as part of a larger reactionary process that hinged on an active break with conventional interpretations of the social identity of a fat woman.
Black and Latina plus-size models who differed from the normative white body in fashion faced additional pressures to be role models in their ethnic communities, whose embrace of larger bodies may be waning. Size sixteen/eighteen model Yvonne, who was black, saw young black women trying to emulate the body types of high-fashion models through dieting:
They want to look like [straight-size] models but they’re genetic anomalies. I don’t want them [the young girls] to blindly change their bodies to match a picture in a magazine and suffer the consequences.
This shift in bodily ideals that Yvonne witnessed matches what anthropologist Anne E. Becker found in the island nation of Fiji, which traditionally idealized a large, robust body. In her book, Body, Self, and Society: The View from Fiji, Becker noticed a shift in bodily ideals with the introduction of western television. In a culture centered on food, within a few years after exposure to western images of beauty, young girls began, for the first time, to think of themselves as fat and purged to achieve a thinner body. The thin ideal espoused by the fashion industry is spreading across the globe.
Likewise, Ella, a Latina size sixteen/eighteen model, felt determined to make a name for herself as a Latina plus-size model:
This is a Caucasian-dominated industry. When I first started modeling a few years ago, there weren’t really any Latina plus-size models. Now, there are a lot more of us, like a huge boom. It’s time to represent!
As a Latina, Ella embraced her ethnic culture and strove to diversify the industry. She not only aimed for increased size diversity but also racial diversity in fashion. For models like Yvonne and Ella, their work as plus-size models offers young girls and women from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds a counter-image of beauty that is largely absent from fashion.
These plus-size models attempted to overhaul the image of the fat woman as homely and unattractive and replace it with one that they believed was, indeed, sexy and desirable. They attempted to break with conventional stereotype because they accepted their fat. They shed the layers of shame and guilt and demanded that others saw them the way they saw themselves—beautiful, gorgeous, and “curvilicious.” Wendy, for example, had recently lost a significant amount of weight and felt more confident about her size eighteen body, so much in fact that she used modeling as an excuse to flaunt her body in form-fitting outfits. “I was unhappy [with] how I looked,” Wendy admitted. “I covered up. Now, I wear the tightest, shortest skirts because I look good.” Working as models empowered these women, like Wendy, to boldly celebrate their bodies.
Having discovered this community, their decision to become models involved stepping out from the murky waters of a cultural discourse rife with weight bias and prejudicial stereotypes concerning the fat body to become the new faces of plus-size modeling. These plus-size models did not hide their bodies. They became part of a niche in the fashion industry that sought to expose the flesh in a more positive light and aimed to create a new discourse on fat.