Molly Sims talks weight loss: ‘It was a modelling horror story’

Model Molly Sims has come clean about pressure to lose weight, saying “I probably lost 25 pounds . . . it was a modelling horror story.” While she insists that that “it ended up being OK” because she “was healthy about it,” she is concerned about young women today. “There is 10 times more pressure because of the Internet . . . Girls have more things to compare themselves to.”

Model Crystal Renn’s weight has fluctuated from size 0 to size 16 as she grappled with anorexia and later became a plus-size model. In 2010 she published a book called ‘Hungry’ in which she chronicled her tale of living and working with anorexia. Now a size 8, Renn has said, “It’s about the healthy eating habits that you have, and wherever your body falls. Whether that is actually a 4 or an 18, doesn’t matter.”

This photo of Tyra Banks, former supermodel and host of America’s Next Top Model, was taken in 2007 – about the same time that a tabloid newspaper ran an unflattering photo of her in a bathing suit under headlines like “America’s Next Top Waddle” and “Tyra Porkchop.” Tyra hit back, appearing on the cover of People magazine and saying “I get so much mail from young girls who say, “I look up to you, you’re not as skinny as everyone else, I think you’re beautiful.”

Model Filippa Hamilton was the face of Ralph Lauren for years. But the 5’10, 54 kg model revealed in 2009 that she was fired by the fashion designer for being too fat. “They said I couldn’t fit in their clothes anymore,” she told the US TODAY show. She said that Lauren wrote a letter to her agent saying, “We’re terminating your services because you don’t fit into the sample clothes that you need to wear.” The company denied it.

Model Coco Rocha spoke out in 2010 with one of the most intelligent and incisive responses to the pressure faced by models: “I’m a 21 year old model, 6 inches taller and 10 sizes smaller than the average American woman. Yet in another parallel universe I’m considered “fat”… This was the subject of major discussion this week and the story that was spun was: ‘Coco Rocha is too fat for the runway’ … this issue of model’s weight is, and always has been, of concern to me. There are certain moral decisions which seem like no brainers to us. For example, not employing children in sweatshops, and not increasing the addictiveness of cigarettes. When designers, stylists or agents push children to take measures that lead to anorexia or other health problems in order to remain in the business, they are asking the public to ignore their moral conscience in favor of the art.”

In 2013, gorgeous plus size model Robyn Lawley lashed out at the thigh gap trend, saying she was disturbed at how people online were posting pictures of thigh gaps to be used as inspiration for weight loss and dieting: “The last thing I would want for my future daughter would be to starve herself because she thought a ‘thigh gap’ was necessary to be deemed attractive,” she wrote in an essay for The Daily Beast.