I recently met two young girls in Kenya, one wanted to be a model. You would think that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary working with young models all the time, but they were 11 and 13, much younger than girls im used to being around. The young girls asked me why i was in Kenya, i was there on a fitness holiday before i started filming for Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model, i said to them i wanted to lose weight. I saw their eyes widen a little and look me up and down, ” you’re skinny you don’t need to lose weight” and i said “oh i do” and showed then my cushion pad tummy which i’ve had all my life, a sign of a woman some say though to me it also makes me ‘fat’. The bewildered looks didnt abate, and one turned away and pulled up her top to look at her tummy. This had a profound affect on me. Right then i realised how impressionable young girls are and what resposibility someone like me has to not get carried away with the dangerous allure of thiness. I’ve recently joined Models 1, if i had known at 13 that in my thirties and what in model terms is counted as a ‘curvy girl’, this would have made such a difference to an unhappy teenager who painfully struggled to find her place and identity and body image being surrounded by misleading icons in celebrities and magazine fantasies. The point is you dont have to be thin to be deemed beautiful, as Models 1 have just pointed out to me, and If I can be someone to peddal that shtick then i must bear the weight of that responsibility.
