Free Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling by Amanda M. Czerniawski

show:
    I think that [confidence] lets the designer go out on a limb and take me because if there is any hesitation whatsoever, it would be a catastrophe if you were to go out and flip out or fall or whatever else. It would become a total farce.
    Her level of confidence to walk on that runway without hesitation was the product of a long journey of self-awareness and self-acceptance. After years of trying and failing to adhere to a specific notion of beauty, Velvet, at thirty-nine years of age and nearly three hundred pounds, succeeded and walked down the runway of the best couturiers:
    For me it was just sort of like an extra added, like, cherry on top. You know, and just to me, it really served to say when you come to truly accept yourself, there’s great rewards . . . I think that having gone through that struggle, it just sort of shows you that once you make it through that, there’s so much kudos you get after that journey.
    This journey involved severe calorie restriction, taking the weight-loss drug Fen-phen, working behind the camera as a fashion photographer, and finally coming to peace with her body in front of the camera.
    As a teenager, Velvet considered modeling only after continually being asked by others if she was, indeed, a model. When she finally approached an agency at a scouting event at a local, suburban mall, the agent told her that she, who weighed 135–140 pounds at the time, was “way too big.” Soon after this incident, Velvet moved to Manhattan to attend the School for Visual Arts, went on a restrictive, five hundred calorie diet, and lost more than twenty pounds:
    I got down to 117 pounds and went back to the agency, thinking like, “woo hoo, I’ve done it.” They were just like, “hmmm, wow, you are still just too fat.” At that point there was just no possibility, you know because I had been restrictive dieting to such an extent that I totally backfired and I would eat like crazy and then I would diet. So it was the whole yo-yo dieting thing that got me fatter and got me sort of more of into trying to accept myself versus worrying about being a model or not.
    When Velvet later moved to France to pursue a career in photography, she applied to a plus-size agency as a photographer, thinking that she would have an edge as a fat woman. She sent in her pictures, and the agency presented her with the chance to model:
    When she [the agent] said, “Well, I would like to sign you,” I was like, “you have to be kidding me. I am like thirty-eight and going to start modeling?” But I thought, “Okay, cool. Why not? I have nothing to lose.”
    In a relatively short time, Velvet accomplished what many aspiring models can only hope to achieve, namely international recognition and professional relationships with top designers.

    Velvet D’Amour.
    Many of the models with whom I spoke gushed about Velvet. As one model praised, “She is my plus-size superhero.” After the media storm, Velvet received hundreds of emails from women inspired by her work, as well as from those who demonstrated a strong aversion to her fat. While the subsequent years presented Velvet with a variety of opportunities, including the lead, title role in a French film,
Avida
, which screened at both the Cannes and Tribeca Film Festivals, she still experienced difficulty in further advancing her modeling career because of her size and age:
    You know, I have gone down the runway twice for two great people, but the reality is there is not a massive amount of work for three hundred pound women who are forty years old . . . I try to create opportunity for other people because I know that that opportunity is very limited, notonly for bigger women but older women . . . I think that the reason people admire me is because I give them that sense of possibility. I was able to do it. I was able to break through that barrier.
    Given Velvet’s iconic runway walk and mixed media reception, “larger” plus-size models faced