An Appetite for Success

Courtesy of Crystal Renn; AP Photo Crystal Renn starved herself to model, but only found happiness (and fame) when she became plus-size. Doree Shafrir talks to Renn about food, fashion, and her new memoir, Hungry.

"I have not met somebody who put their body through what I did to get what they want," model Crystal Renn said the other day, speaking from London. "A lot of these girls are young girls—they're already a size 6, so of course they go on a diet and get down to a size 2. To go from a size 14—I was fighting nature."

Renn, who is 23, is one of the most successful plus-size models working in the industry today. She's appeared in American Vogue and on the covers of Italian Vogue and Russian Harper's Bazaar, and in ads for Dolce & Gabbana. She's walked the runway in a Jean-Paul Gaultier show; he made a dress just for her. And now she's published a memoir, Hungry, which chronicles her years trying to lose enough weight to be a "straight" model. She had the epiphany three years later that she was done fighting nature, and her redemption came in the form of a plus-size modeling contract with Ford Models.

“We women are all different types—body, hair color, skin color. It’s wrong to have one type as the ideal. It doesn’t make sense.”

Renn was first approached at the age of 14 by a modeling scout who'd been invited to her charm-school class in Clinton, Mississippi. As she recounts in Hungry: "He took Polaroids of me and studied them. 'There's just one thing,' he said diffidently. 'You'd have to lose a bit of weight.' He told me I'd need a 34-inch hip. If I could get mine down to that, I'd be a superstar."

Her hips were 43 inches at the time. She had nine inches to go. So she embarked on an intense workout and diet regimen; for months, she subsisted on little more than lettuce, sugar-free Jell-O, Diet Coke, and sugar-free chewing gum.

Today, Renn doesn't resent the scout for what would seem to be an enormously irresponsible directive (giving a 14-year-old girl the advice that she should shed 60 pounds to become a model) ."He gave me the opportunity," she said. "I made the choice to do it. He was doing his job—not like, Let me give this girl an eating disorder."

She lost enough weight by 2001 that she was able to go to New York and start booking modeling gigs—but she also got depressed and obsessive about keeping the weight off. She had trouble sleeping and had heart palpitations; her skin was dry; she had headaches constantly. Finally, in 2003, she'd had enough; after an incident in which a photographer booked her, then refused to work with her because she was "too fat," Renn talked to her agent and asked to be placed with a plus-size agency.

Her salvation was Gary Dakin, now a vice president at Ford Models, who signed Renn and became like a father figure to her. "The owner of the other agency called me and said, 'I have this girl, she just can't keep the weight off and she's somebody I think you need to see. It would definitely get me out of a situation,'" Dakin recalled.

When he met Renn, who was then 17, Dakin said he felt an instant connection with her: "She had something I hadn't seen walk through the door before." Even though she had already decided to start doing plus-size modeling, her body was still relatively thin, and Dakin put her on a rehabilitation course. "I was like, just take care of yourself. Just settle down and stop worrying about it. Relax." She got up to a size 16 before settling into her current 12.