What Are The Struggles Of An 'inbetweener' Model?

Working together on this shoot she explained to me how she found it hard to get work in the modelling industry because of her 'average' size, so I asked Kira to explain to me what she meant, her statement is this.  I am a confident women and I have grown to love my body but this has not always been the case. There was a time where I was quite self conscious. I have never been big but yet always had wide hips and I always had to buy bigger sized jeans than my friends. I even tried a diet along with my mum when I was 15 until I realised that there was not much to loose and I started to begin accepting my body and bone structure. This is the body I have been given, this is the body I am going to live my life in but despite this acknowledgment I never really liked to wear tight dresses or skirts which highlighted my hips. I also avoided wearing short jeans because I thought I had too much cellulite. I simply learnt how to dress myself in the most flattering way for my body and thanks to all the countless body shaming teen magazines I had loads of tips on how to make myself appear slimmer.

The first time I felt completely happy and free with my body was when I went to Australia at the age of nineteen. For the first time I saw a lot of curvy girls wearing tight dresses and they looked fabulous. In Germany I was more used to bigger girls wearing wide fitted clothes. It helped that people seem to love my face, so I could kind of get away with not having the “perfect” beach body, whatever that is…

That was also the time when a lot of people started asking me if I was modelling or if I wanted to get into the industry. I always said that I was not slim enough and that I would never starve myself to be that skinny. It was my dear friend and model who suggested trying plus-size modelling but I wasn’t quite convinced. Eventually at the age of 24 I was confident enough to give it a go.

I guess I was still a bit naive when I started modelling. I never thought I would be a supermodel but I hoped that I could prove that you can get somewhere by just being yourself, without changing anything about yourself, without changing the diet, without stressing yourself about the way you look. I thought the curve industry would celebrate every size and shape but I quickly learnt I was wrong. Curvy is good but you need to have the curves in the right places and unfortunately for my modelling career my chest and bum are not quite big enough. I came to realise that I was a bit too skinny to be plus-size but to big to be a regular model. How absurd is it that I am a size 14, representing the average size of UK woman but yet the world does not seem ready for me, an average sized women. The plus size industry has just as many ideals as regular modelling. My normal body is not as wanted as the other two polar opposite ideals.

I went to many castings and often heard the same thing; ‘You are too small’, ‘We are looking for a 16 or bigger’ and so on. But is not possible for me to gain weight where the fashion industry wants me to. I met curve models who had surgery to help out where nature failed to reflect the ideal and I met girls at castings wearing padded pants and bras to convince the judges that they were the right match. I also met girls in their twenties asking me if I was interested in Botox. And I ended up finding myself being more critical about myself and not feeling as beautiful as I used to feel. I guess it takes time to get used to the rejection you need to face at castings, being in an actual competition with other beautiful women.

I dearly hope that one day women can just be themselves and not be in competition everyday and that one day the average size will have a place on catwalks and in magazines. That one day there will be a variety of fabulous woman representing the fashion world.