Model reveals the plus side of the fashion industry

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Crystal Renn

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The two sides of Crystal Renn: the induced skinniness of her early career, above, and the embracing of her fuller self (below).

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(CP PHOTO)

Hungry

A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves

By Crystal Renn with Marjorie Ingall

Simon & Schuster, 231 pages, $33

Crystal Renn is not a household name, but she is changing runway modelling one stiletto-clad step at a time.

At 23, this feisty American has graced the covers of several respected fashion magazines, posed for world-renowned photographers, and strutted the runway in a gown designed just for her by Frenchman Jean Paul Gaultier.

She is said to be the world's highest paid plus-size model, and she has written a memoir that is both an enlivening story of her rise to model stardom and a cautionary tale for young women everywhere. Because to get to the top, Renn had to sink low.

Renn was "discovered" in her small Mississippi town and told she could be the next Gisele Bündchen, if only she lost about 70 pounds from her normal-sized teenage frame.

Within a year, she had skinnied down to a mere 98 pounds on a 5'9" body. In model land, she was perfect; in real life, she was suffering from anorexia and exercise bulimia.

The photos in the middle of the book illustrate the stark contrast between happy cheerleader to super-skinny supermodel.

Renn is able to detach from herself as she describes, in chilling terms, her swift descent into the disease.

Her objectivity is admirable when she observes, "If I couldn't grab my hip bone like the handle of a coffee mug, I panicked."

However, her likability suffers as a result of this distance, as she holds her readers at arm's length, too.

After several years, she could no longer keep the weight off, regardless of her eight-hour-a-day workouts and virtual starvation.

Still, her agent wanted to see her lose more weight. Her only other option was to become a plus-size model.

At this stage, Renn is less reticent about revealing her true personality. She speaks more freely about food and comes to life when recalling the first meal she ate after deciding to become a plus.

Working with her co-writer Marjorie Ingall, Renn sometimes submits, especially in the first few chapters, to the lure of verbosity.

Her memories of her childhood home are the definition of purple prose, and the self-serving tangents that ponder what "ontological dilemmas" caused her "such agita" as a child are boring.

Perhaps, as a model, she is determined to prove her intelligence, or at the very least, the vastness of her vocabulary.

Readers can forgive her this after she says, "The stereotype of models is that we're brain-dead, but some of us are just starving."

Only once does Renn actually speak to the reader as though he or she is someone with an eating disorder.

Otherwise, she switches consistently and effectively between a narrative of her memories and an argument for portraying healthy weight ideals, as well as diversity, in high fashion.

Although the industry nearly killed her, Renn is a staunch supporter of fashion, and predicts that its current predilection for skinniness will change.

She goes head-to-head with many popular current theories about weight loss and points out the negative impact of dozens of "reality" shows that purport to achieve long-lasting results, but only promote unhealthy and usually unrealistic weight goals.

Renn devotes several chapters to the science and history behind weight gain (first a chapter devoted to why people are skinny, and then one for why people are fat), but does not dwell on scientific details.

Her arguments sound convincing and plausible, and she hammers the point home through sheer conviction, if not through scientific theory.

Renn is driven, smart, current, clever and funny. She successfully navigates the much-discussed societal issues that are the nightmares of her past, and injects them with bits of humour, intelligence and a whole lot of style.

Jennifer Ryan is a creative writer/producer at Citytv in Winnipeg.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 H10