When a teen steps into the modeling bizz, the catwalk to the top can be rocky. Crystal Renn ‘s ambition made her very hungry, it almost killed her. Then she put on weight, became more beautiful and really good.
Crystal’s father: unknown. And mom? She gives her three-month-old bundle to her grandmother – attention deficit, hyperactivity, Ritalin provides a dreamlike “compensation” for a nightmare childhood. For many, this opens the door to the loony bin, but Crystal Renn’s path is different: she becomes a model at 14! But the real suffering begins with that dream job. A model scout talks the little girl from Mississippi off the street, makes her mouth water with Gisele bundle pictures, saying she “just” has to lose 40 percent of her weight. A contract for 250,000 dollars, walking up and down in a flurry of flashbulbs, great prospects. “Women should understand what they are doing to themselves when they maltreat their bodies with hunger just to conform to an ideal,” says the model when she arrives in the real world. At 16, Renn weighs only 49 kilos at 1 meter 75. A few vegetables, diet coke and pills, plus four hours in one gym and secretly four in the next – the double life of a body freak. Up to 15 castings a day give her the rest: panic, palpitations, hair loss, depression, the list of complaints is longer than that of the clients, even if anorexia is not a foreign word there. “Pressure from the industry, my agency, myself? Nothing there”, she says today, “I feel the pressure from the public and the media”, who else – someone who continues to work in the same business after going through limbo doesn’t want to pee on the leg of her clients or herself. When Renn turns 17, everything gets out of hand. Despite boycotting calories, she puts on weight, adds three hours of exercise, but it doesn’t help. Cancellation of a casting, crisis, Renn pours her heart out at Ford Models. The agency has understanding and XL sizes in its portfolio. Crystal recovers, suddenly finds fun in life, so much so that the top shots come after all: Pictures for Elle, then Vogue Paris, Dolce&Gabbana, the highlight for the time being are assignments for Chanel. “Change your patterns, you designers, make the 40 the standard, then thin and curvy models will fit in,” is one of the many demands in the book “Hungry”, which she slammed in the face of the evil public in 2009. This summer, Jimmy Choo is garnishing chic shoes with the woman who still, yes still, presents plus-size fashion by Marina Rinaldi. Rumors in blogs are doing the rounds that she has fallen off the wagon. “I don’t feel comfortable in 14 either. How much do I have to stuff into me to maintain such a size? That only leads to new eating disorders,” says Jojo, now 25. We hope it will soon come to rest.