. It’s a look into a small aspect of any model’s life, not because models don’t eat, but because, based on the history of prioritizing thinness in the fashion industry, especially if you’re a model, enjoying and publicly indulging in food is a radical act.
Standing at a towering six foot two, Pojo is a former model who was signed to a modeling agency when she was just 13 years old. Working mostly commercial for the five years that she was signed, she started out with a bright-eyed, optimistic view of the fashion industry. But it was toward the end that she became hip to what her peers were going through, especially the ones working in high fashion.
“I went to Paris after high school graduation and got scouted by an international agency and had the most awful experience meeting them. It was kind of the tipping point in a lot of ways for me,” she says. “They walked me into a room, weighed me, and told me I was fat, my skin was bad, and if I ever wanted to be taken seriously in this industry, I would have to step it up and prove myself — which was laughable as I was successful in New York. I left crying.
That was the end of her modeling career, but as a result she started Models That Eat in 2017, inspired by both her own experiences in the industry and her friends’. The basis was to take pictures of her friends, who happened to be models, eating food. “I was thinking it’s so weird how people are like, ‘Oh, a model, give her a burger.’ Everyone was so iffy about models’ diets,” says Pojo. “At first it started out as a joke and simple solution to the idea that models don’t eat.
So where does the stigma of “models not eating” come from? It’s hard to pinpoint, but for the most part, the most successful and visible models
Now prove they don’t throw it up afterwards