Plus size model claims losing weight destroyed her modelling career

Katie Willcox reached a healthy body weight, but was branded too small for plus-size and too big for mainstream modelling

A plus-size model who launched a campaign to make healthy “the new skinny” says she lost her six figure salary and struggled to get work after losing 40lbs.

Katie Willcox, a model based in New York, says she was told to either lose more weight after dropping from 200lbs to 160lbs or put it back on in order to be selected by casting agents.

She told the New York Daily News: “Everyone said, ‘You need to gain the weight back because you’re too small. Or, ‘We like your face . . . If you only had this [thinner] body you could be a supermodel.’ If I had a dollar for every time I heard that."

 

A photo posted by HNS Body Image Game Changer (@katiehwillcox) on Oct 26, 2015 at 2:30pm PDT

The 30-year-old said she began focusing on her health after meeting her partner Bradford Willcox, a personal trainer and photographer, and eventually reached a healthy body mass index through exercise and eating more nutritious meals.

When she did lose weight, Wilcox claims her agents encouraged her to shed more in order to be booked for higher profile jobs. She responded by slashing her calorie intake to less than 1,200 a day, but says she made herself miserable in the process. It was this that inspired her to start the Healthy is the New Skinny movement in 2011, a campaign advocating prioritising health over weight and promoting body positivity.

 

A photo posted by HNS Body Image Game Changer (@katiehwillcox) on Oct 15, 2015 at 3:36pm PDT

Willcox and Bradford now deliver workshops to schools in the US and run their own modelling agency, the Natural Model Management, which she says blends “glamour and beauty with health”. Models in their books are asked to be healthy as opposed to skinny and have worked for major fashion brands such as H&M and Forever 21.

“You’ll never be skinny enough,” she added. “Whereas if your focus is to be healthy, your mentality shifts with everything you do.”