I Used To Be Hot

I was really good-looking when I was young. You can call me vain, self-absorbed, whatever you want. It doesn’t matter, it’s true. I was fairly self-absorbed. I had to be. My body and face became my personal ATM.

I was ushered into the enviable Elite modeling high fashion world at age 15. It happened really fast. My classmates in Missouri were jealous of my meteoric rise. One day I was living with my parents, the next I was on a plane to Tokyo, having just signed a contract with Elite Model Management for $20,000. The 3-month contract stated I would make $20k even if I didn’t land any modeling gigs while in Tokyo. Only a fool would have turned down that contract.

While in Japan, I cashed out my genetic lottery ticket and went as far as I could before totally crashing and burning from self-hatred and disgust.

Was I ready to have an adult modeling career with real money as a teenager? No. Did I learn any life lessons or become a better person? Sort of. But it took losing everything to make me into a human again.

You may be asking these questions about now:

Why am I not rich now? Why did I sink into abject poverty for years and years? Why didn’t I marry some wealthy man? Why am I a single mother?

Modeling is not a career. It’s a way to cash out your genetic lottery ticket, that’s all. I got lucky because I happened to live in a society and during a time when physical attractiveness was valued more than anything else.

This is what happened:

I was an introvert and still am. I suffered from delicate flower syndrome. This meant I internalized and analyzed the external world to an obscene degree. This also meant I internalized external signals and messages more than people who are outwardly focused. I ingested messages, twisted them around in my mind and sometimes caved inwards when an environment, like the modeling industry, was too toxic.

I became anorexic and bulimic in response to the pressures of the modeling world. Most female bodies do not stay absurdly thin after their teen years. My 15 year-old body was quite different from my 19 year-old one. Evolution has favored a filled-out female figure for obvious child-bearing survival reasons. The modeling industry promotes a version of females who have lost the ability to bear children. I knew anorexic models whose periods had stopped because of their horrifically low body weight. And I once met an anorexic who had grown a light covering of hair on her chest. This was her body’s defense to create heat because it had lost all it’s warmth-giving fat.

After a while, I stopped respecting myself for living in a fake world of empty money. I stopped caring about making any more of it. It had lost it’s value. I was in a place of money, living a life that was hollow and devoid of any meaning or purpose. I started hating my life. I understood that hoarding money wasn’t the answer to happiness. I also knew that money alone would never be able to make me happy. I started cutting myself.

I began craving invisibility, purpose and meaning. One day, while I was staring out of a train window in Japan, I saw a peasant tending a rice field. I longed to be that peasant because I assumed the peasant felt connected to something greater than herself: nature. I could have been wrong, but I knew I had to get out of the modeling industry before it warped me even more. The peasant symbolized purpose and humility.

At age 18, after drunk driving myself to Canada from Chicago, I rejected the modeling world for good. After three months of aimlessly wandering around Canada and the East Coast, I decided to return to Missouri and check myself into a mental ward. My bulimia gradually went away on its own. I decided to go to college after I was released from the Eating Disorder Unit.

In college, I became ashamed of my modeling experiences and would only discuss them with my closest friends.

I’m still ashamed, even to this day. I wish I could be proud of my physical appearance, but there is nothing to be proud of. The only ones who deserve praise are my parents. They are the ones who created my physical self. I had nothing to do with it. And now that I’m sagging, a bit puffy and middle-aged, I’m 2000% happier. My insides match my outsides much better now. And most importantly, I feel a sense of purpose: to tell the truth.

You might also like my other story: The Modeling Industry Destroyed My Self-Esteem And Soul

Stellabelle is the pseudonym for Leah Stephens. She just finished her first non-fiction book, Un-Crap Your Life.

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