The Making of a Plus-Sized Model

Kate Dillon talks about eating too little, and too much
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 7, 2010 2:05 PM CDT
The Making of a Plus-Sized Model
Model Kate Dillon at the People Magazine's '50 Most Beautiful People in the World' issue private party at the Hudson Hotel in New York City in this 2001 file photo.   (Getty Images)

Before she became the face of plus-sized modeling, Kate Dillon had a “nontrivial eating disorder.” A size 4, she was highly sought for “normal” modeling gigs thanks to her beautiful face, but “I felt so fat all the time,” she says in a profile in Vogue. When she got an intestinal virus and someone at work told her she looked great, she quit. “I lost any faith that being pretty or skinny was better than anything else.”

Dillon returned as a plus-sized model with a message: “You can be beautiful and a little bit bigger.” But she was just lashing out through food, she says, which wasn’t much healthier than starving herself. “I used to eat an entire bag of Tostitos. I didn’t know what full was.” So she took another break, started working out, and got a degree at Harvard, and started a program to educate girls in Rwanda. Now she models on the side—but on her terms. (More Kate Dillon stories.)

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