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After fighting her body at every turn, resisting eating ‘normal’ meals, and exercising vigorously, Liza Golden-Bhojwani collapsed one night in her apartment while preparing her low-cal dinner of 20 pieces of steamed edamame.
Booking jobs left and right the 17-year-old American model was headed to London, Milan and Paris Fashion Week. Her ultra slim frame and striking bone-structure propelled her to the height of her, ultimately short-lived, high fashion career.
Now, 5 years later, she’s sharing her journey to body acceptance.
Recently posting a #FlashbackFriday in the form of a before and after Instagram post, she addressed her eating struggles and her all-consuming fight with her own body.
“(This was) my first proper fashion week where I was actually the size I needed to be. I was booking amazing shows that one never thinks they actually could, walking with girls who I once looked up to, it was a serious adrenaline rush...”
After the incident where she fainted in her apartment she increased her portion sizes to about 800-1000 calories a day. But this changed her shape, and she slowly but surely became ‘too big’ to be a high fashion runway model. One of her last runway shows was for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan. Yet, afterwards she received large-scale online criticism from people who shamed her for her weighty thighs.
Soon after she left the industry as she simply wasn’t booking jobs anymore.
But Harper's Bazaar reports that in 2014, only two years after she'd given up the diet that saw her passed out on the floor of her New York apartment, she started restricting herself again. She wanted to get back into the glittering world of modelling.
"In 2014 I got a kick, a rev of my engine, I wanted to get in shape again, I was over giving up. I wanted in again, but in a much healthier way," she says on Instagram.
"And I did just that, I worked my a** off day in and day out in the gym. I was strict about my diet, but I wasn't fully starving myself like I had two years ago, I was eating more but I still kept a diary of exactly what I ate everyday and I would tally up the calories at the end of the day."
However, she was still not able to book sufficient modelling work.
She then went to India to do some soul-searching. She asked herself whether she should give up her dream of modelling altogether, for the sake of her health and well-being.
"I was struggling to lose weight again, and one day I just thought ... why am I fighting against my body? Why don't I just go in the same direction? Stop forcing my own agenda and just listen to my body. And that's what I did, slowly, slowly I was coming into my true body form. My natural self, not my forced self," she writes.
She met her now husband while on her travels in India, and currently resides and works there as a curvy model.
Huffington Post reports that even though we have more positive body role models today in the form of curvy models like Ashley Graham, the industry still greatly pressures young models around the world to maintain thin frames – who sometimes go to extremes to do so.
Read: "Plus size" model Ashley Graham makes history at New York Fashion Week
Sitting at fashion week recently I couldn’t help but wonder whether a centimetre or two could be the difference between a young model booking fashion week or not. For many, I’m sure this is a reality.
Of course many models are naturally built in the way required by designers and agencies, yet many starve, purge and push their bodies to the limit and risk irreversible future damage in order to be what the world calls ‘model skinny’.
