Style Celebration: Model Behaviour- Doutzen Kroes Was Told To Lose Weight & “Not Eat For Weeks” By Agents

Twenty seven year old Dutch model Doutzen Kroes has always been one of our fave girls since she started back in 2003. Aside from being gorgeous she has an athletic body that sets her apart from some of the other “clothes hanger” girls we see on the runway every season. Doutzen along with Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani and Arianna Huffington gave a speech at Harvard University on the prevalence of eating disorders among young women and the fashion industry's part in pushing a false body image. Doutzen had some crazy but hardly shocking experiences of her own to add that just blew our mind.

"What lead us to establish that thin is beautiful and that thinness is the aesthetic code we should follow?" Franca Sozzani asked an audience at Harvard University on Monday. "Why the age of supermodels, who were beautiful and womanly, slowly started decreasing and we now have still undeveloped adolescents with no sign of curves? Why is this considered beautiful?"

Every year the CFDA holds a panel discussion on body image in the fashion industry. "I can open up any magazine or go to any show and tell you what girls are taking Adderall, how many girls are taking Vicodin, how many girls are throwing up — girls are really resorting to dangerous things,” said casting agent James Scully. “To me, for Karlie Kloss, what is to say what happened to Gemma Ward, what happened to Hilary Rhoda will not happen to her? We all love her today, but when she grows breasts and she turns 18 are we all going to turn on her?"

"I think we created a droid-like mold and fashion editors or stylists or now even buyers are trained to look at that and say I can’t see continuity unless I see the same droid-like skeleton on the runway."- Designer, Zac posen

Australian model Gemma Ward who Scully referred to was famously a darling of the runways and editors several years ago. With a sweet doll-like face and an impossibly thin body that could fit into the tiniest of sample sizes she was booked to the hilt for runways, campaigns and editorials every season, then it all abruptly ended. The glitch was that Gemma happened to be only 15 when she started working, flat chested and rail thin she obviously did not stay that way through the years. Sadly she is only 25 now but after taking a year off of modeling to mourn the death of her close friend Heath Ledger in 2008 her body had matured into a young woman's figure and that did not sit well with anybody. When she walked onto the Chanel runway the press endlessly mocked her for ‘”gaining weight” and looking very different than before. In other words she just grew up. After the debacle at Chanel she gave up modeling and is currently working on acting projects like the upcoming film “the Great Gatsby” alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

In the same vein Doutzen has been very public with her earlier struggles as a model because she refused to starve herself or resort to drugs which consequentially lead her career down a different path. "I probably fit the sample size once, when I was eleven or twelve. It became a problem — I was always told lots of times that I should lose weight. It was a thing, ‘You look great, but you should probably lose a few pounds. That kept going on until I was about 22, and when I was like, ‘This is crazy,’ because I would look in the mirror and I like the way I look." So Kroes met with her agents: "What we called now a so-called 'ass meeting,' because I have one, I have one. It was there, and you know I could maybe get rid of it, I had a choice, not eat maybe for weeks."

Kroes actually credits food for her success. "When you don’t eat, you get grumpy, you don’t feel good. So how can you have joy in what you’re doing? And I have that joy and I think that’s what clients see and that’s why I work for two huge global brands. They like working with me, and it’s because I’m eating! There are naturally skinny girls, but not all of them and I’m not one of them."

The global brands she is referring to are Victoria’s Secret and Swiss Cashmere label Repeat. Kroes was selected as a Victoria’s Secret “Angel” after modeling for the retailer’s catalogue for a few years. In May 2009 and May 2010, Forbes named Kroes fifth in the list of the World's 15 Top- Earning Supermodels. None of that cash came through from the runways though, this past fashion week for Fall 2012 she was only cast in one show.

Doutzen might be too big for the fickle casting directors and designers but she looks fantastic especially when you consider she has a one year old son and was spotted in a two-piece at the beach just days ago. He who laughs last,,,

Scroll down to see more images of Doutzen and Gemma Ward.