I was told I was plus size: it was the best thing to happen to my body image

I recently realised that I’ve been the same height and the same size for over a decade. It’s wild to realise that this is the same body I had- and loathed- at 15. The boobs I once compressed into minimiser bras are the same ones that book me lingerie jobs, and the thighs I used to pull back in the mirror to seem smaller are now used to fill out jeans. I don’t often dwell on how far I’ve come, but for me there was a definite turning point in learning to accept my body: becoming a model.

My experience of teenage insecurity was pretty bog-standard. I was 5’11” and an athletic size 12 in a time of Tumblr “thinspo,” so unfortunately saw my perfectly healthy frame as my arch nemesis. Bouts of disordered eating were passed off as “just girly things” and I would cut the labels off my clothes to hide that I wasn’t a size 8. Perhaps having a larger frame than most of my friends warped the way I saw myself, or perhaps it was just a side-effect of being pubescent in the early 2000s. America’s Next Top Model sold the dream of modelling to teenage girls, and I remember once thinking that if I could lose a measly 15kg I could probably be a millionaire.

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While I sometimes felt a bit shit, I must stress that I was overall healthy and happy and tried not to dwell on it. I kept playing sport, graduated high school, and was preparing to leave on a gap year when I was scouted to go and meet with a modelling agency. I had already come to terms with not being “model material”, so I didn’t expect much from it or take it particularly seriously. The meeting went well, however, and they wanted to sign me… as a plus size model. This was the first time I’d heard that phrase, and I regret to admit that I was initially offended. I was 17 and had spent my entire adolescence trying to shrink, and it felt like suddenly all the insecurities about my body were being confirmed with one label.

The term “plus size model,” I would soon learn, was merely an industry term used for models above a size 10. While things have definitely changed (I’ll save that topic for another time), it was confusing to enter an industry that was so categorised. I don’t identify, and never have, as a plus sized woman, so to suddenly be in a position where I was being presented as one felt like a misleading and unhealthy misrepresentation.

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Despite my confusion on my place in the fashion industry, I was still curious to see if I would book jobs (and honestly just up for a bit of an adventure). It turns out I was a bit young and a bit small to work for a lot of the plus brands in Australia (surprise, surprise), but I headed to Europe where there was more going on. As I started casting two things became quite clear: I was too small and I was too shy. It seems all those years of trying to shrink my body and blend in had done nothing but make me a tad meek. Self-consciousness is pervasive: it doesn’t care where your insecurities lie.

Suddenly I was the “small girl,” a role I had always craved, and it turns out there was no pot of instant gratification at the end of that rainbow. It was clear to me, in the most absolutely cliched way, that it was my own attitude towards my body that was holding me back. I met other models (both larger and smaller than me) who booked job after job because they had the confidence to own themselves wholly. I consciously tried to stop slouching and gave myself permission to take up space. I stopped weighing myself, and for the first time saw exercise as more than just a weight loss tool.

While neither my weight nor my size ever changed, I am sure that the way I carried myself did. No longer did I practice “skinny” poses in the mirror, but rather had to learn to have a presence in a room. Although I still had my misgivings about the appropriateness of the label (again, another topic), I was incredibly proud to be a plus size model. On a personal level it meant that I wasn’t willing to edit my healthy body, and on a social level I hoped it meant that no one else ought to, either.

Being able to write job: model may sound like a confidence boost, but I promise there is minimal validation that comes from the job itself. In fact, learning to like myself was a survival tactic in an industry that is famous for chewing up pretty girls and regurgitating them onto flights back to their hometown. I have now been modelling full time for six years with the inevitable ups and downs in that career, and I’ve been booked to represent an array of different sizes. Perhaps my survival was self-fulfilling by having to confront my own body insecurities to get anywhere in this industry. Or, perhaps I would have had the epiphany anyway: that this is the only body I’ll ever have so it’s probably better to just gosh dang embrace it.

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My initial horror at being labelled plus size as a teenager speaks volumes about the culture I’d been instilled with: that being skinny is valuable and synonymous with worth. It was only by realising that it was just a label (and not a bad one at that) that I was able to accept my body and myself. I may or may not be the same size in another decade, and I likely won’t be a model, but I’m really okay with that. My relationship with my body these days is less about punishment and more about respect, a lesson that was many awkward years in the making.