Look in the mirror. What do you see?
Many teenage girls might shock you with their answers, as body-image issues are plaguing students in high schools across the nation.
In fact, as many as 10 million females in the United States have a body-image-related eating disorder such as bulimia or anorexia, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. According to NEDA, more than half of teenage girls use unhealthy weight-controlling behaviors such as throwing up, skipping meals, fasting, taking laxatives or smoking cigarettes.
But now, Katie Halchishick – a 26-year-old Los Angeles resident and former plus-size model who struggled with her own body-image issues – is trying to fight the problem with her “Healthy is the New Skinny” campaign, which is promoted in collaboration with her modeling agency and nonprofit school program.
“Natural Model Management is a model agency that is built upon better values in the industry,” Halchishick said. “We really want girls to have a focus on being healthy and also have realistic views of modeling, expectations and things like that.”
At her heaviest, Halchishick was a size 14. But as she started to lose weight in an effort to get healthy, she lost clients as well.
Her agency told her to either gain back weight so she could continue modeling in plus-size, or lose enough that she could be booked as a straight-size model – size 0 to size 4.
Halchishick didn’t appreciate feeling like her agency was in control of what happened to her body or her career. She believed there were clients out there who would want to book her for the body and size she was naturally meant to be – which shifts between a size 8 and 10.
“It’s just a really horrible mentality,” Halchishick said. “So I was like, I really want to focus on trying to be part of the solution to this problem. I felt like, `If you build it, they will come.’ And that’s kind of what happened.”
Natural Model Management embraces models with healthy, natural weights as well as plus-size models. With almost 50 girls in the agency, Halchi-
shick is proving skeptics wrong by showing there are clients out there who want natural- looking women.
Her models have been booked internationally and they have clients such as Kohl’s, Target, Jessica London, Torrid and Forever 21. As Halchishick says, there may not be a huge market for middle- range sizes, but they put the effort in to find jobs for their models.
But more than just trying to help change the fashion industry’s view of what’s beautiful, she is also trying to make a difference with younger girls through her Perfectly UnPerfected Program, a nonprofit school campaign that addresses body- image issues with students.
The program started after Kristin Close – then a senior at Placer High School in Auburn – had been talking to Halchi-
shick about the prospect of modeling. After learning Halchishick’s message of “Healthy is the new skinny,” Close decided that was something her school could benefit from hearing and, for her senior project, asked Halchishick to come to Placer High.
Halchishick agreed and brought along some of the Natural models as well. The project included separate assemblies for the boys and girls, as well as photo shoots during lunch and after school so the students could get their photo taken wearing a “Healthy is the new skinny” T-shirt.
Close, now 18, says the assemblies really had an impact on the students – especially the girls. Many had to dry tears when hearing the models’ stories.
“Katie talked, and another `Healthy is the New Skinny’ model, Angela – she’s a mother and she has very unique facial features that she got made fun of in high school for and she was bulimic,” Close said.
“You’d just look around the auditorium and girls were in tears because Angela was telling her story and I actually had to run up on stage and give her a tissue. I think girls just realized that they can be beautiful while still being a size 6 or 8, or plus, and you don’t have to be a size 0 or 2 to be liked or popular or get guys’ attention.”
Before the assembly, Close handed out a survey with about five questions including: What size are you? What size do you want to be? Why?
What she learned astonished her: Every girl wished she were skinnier no matter her current size. Even if she were a size 2, she wanted to be a size 0.
Halchishick believes this is because of the images young girls are inundated with of unrealistically thin models. In fact, most straight-size fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women, according to the NEDA.
But what these young girls don’t know, Halchshick says, is what has been done to perfect the image, such as pinning, stuffing and the use of Photoshop.
“I think girls only get to see these perfect images. They don’t ever actually get to hear anyone talk,” Halchishick said. “So girls assume that all these models are perfect and their lives are perfect because they see everything from a picture. And when you work with them and we all talk, that’s not the case at all.”
Since the Placer High School assembly last year, Halchishick has expanded the Perfectly UnPerfected Program to other schools with the help of her boyfriend and former model Bradford Willcox, and Hugo Schwyzer, a professor of gender studies at Pasadena City College.
They will be going to six schools in Washington and are in the process of bringing the program to a Los Angeles college in 2012.
They skew the details of the assembly to accommodate what the school wants, but the message of “Healthy is the new skinny” is always there, as they talk with students about body- image issues, show pictures before and after Photoshop, and conduct question-and- answer sessions.
During the boys’ assembly, they focus on how they can be the solution to the problem by understanding that what they say to girls about their weight or looks truly affects them.
The response from students, parents and principals has been amazing, says Halchi-
shick. By continuing to get the word out, she hopes to start a revolution as more girls take the initiative to bring the program to their school.
“Everybody has a story and everybody is a person. You have to be sensitive to them as people and not just judge them off of a photo or off of the way they look,” Halchishick said.
“It’s totally changed my life. That one day at Placer was more rewarding than any picture I’ve ever taken.”