On December 12, my social justice group and I went to Jacks to talk with a model who is considered plus sized named Crystal Renn. Crystal was an amazing person to talk to, with a very interesting story and idea on modeling. Crystal was anorexic (she was starving herself to fit the modeling qualities) when she was a younger model, and greatly struggled with her weight. After she was able to pull herself out of the non-eating she decided she didn’t want to continue worrying so much about her weight, and luckily discovered plus sized modeling. In recovery, Crystal wrote a book called Hungry that talks about her story as an anorexic child. It also talks about the fact that everyone has choices, and options, and try’s to help girls who may be anorexic see there is a better path. She choose to write Hungry for a few reasons, one of them being a way to release her anorexia, and put it in the past. She said Hungry was the best form of therapy she could have had, and was a way of proving that she was not her eating disorder, but a person. A question we asked her about Hungry was, “How do you think Hungry will, or already has affected people, especially teens?” Crystal responded by saying girls will read the book, and realize that they are not alone. It is a way of showing anorexic girls, or girls with low self esteem that they deal with the same problems as other teens, and Crystal was just like them.

This is a photo of our group at our interview with the model Crystal Renn

Crystal also talked to us about the standards of modeling, and how twisted the whole system is. If you look “healthy” as a model, and gain weight, you won’t receive any compliments, but if you look “amazing”, you will get complimented, but that is a bad sign because in reality, you are too skinny. Crystal also talked about the fact that beauty is not a size. For her, being in the modeling business as a plus sized model is tough because there are few people who accept and appreciate it. Also, the size categories that people are placed into are crazy. Crystal is plus sized, but she is only a size six, which is tiny! She said girls who are sizes six-eight are floating between plus sized and normal modeling because they too big for the norm, but to small for plus sized. Many girls who are hovering in the middle ground either become anorexic trying to lose weight, or they wear fat suits or binge so they can be in plus size. Crystal believes that a model is a model, no matter what size they are, and I completely agree with that, and don’t think there should be set standards. Crystal told us tons more information, and this is just a small portion of all the extraordinary opinions she had, but it was incredible to meet with someone who has such strong opinions, and who goes against the normal definition of beauty.

This is a photo of the book Hungry