Hungry by Crystal Renn & Marjorie Ingall

Author:Crystal Renn & Marjorie Ingall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

6 LIFE-SIZE

The next morning I went back to The Agent’s office. Her eyes searched my face as she ushered me in. Then she closed the door behind her.

“I want to be plus-size,” I said.

The Agent, God bless her, said, “I’ll get you a meeting with Ford.” We looked at each other for a moment. Then she enfolded me in a giant hug.

Ford Models had the premier plus-size division in the country. The Agent could have been fired for facilitating my departure from The Agency, but she put my emotional and physical health ahead of her fear of her boss. I’ll never forget that.

The next day I walked into Ford’s airy office on lower Fifth Avenue. Its polished wooden floors were pockmarked with little divots from a thousand stilettos. Gary Dakin, now a VP at Ford, came into the lobby to greet me.

Today he says fondly, “You walked in with this huge mane of hair and this face, and we thought, no-brainer!” Gary always says nice things, but not in the fabulous-darling-let’s-blow-smoke-up-the-model’s-ass way endemic to my business. His style is to make me feel upbeat rather than perpetually anxious—the opposite approach from the folks at The Agency. He knew from the start that helping me feel good about myself would make me a better model. I immediately felt that he cared about my happiness as a human being. In a world where personal and professional relationships are intricately intertwined, not always in a healthy way, I instinctively knew I could trust Gary.

Which was fortunate, since The Agency kicked me out of the model apartment the same day.

Ford promptly moved me into theirs. They’d never had a plus-size model stay there before. (Most plus models are older and choose to live on their own.) I had no money—almost everything I’d earned was still tied up at The Agency—but Gary said I should focus on getting my head together. He was sure I’d be a successful plus-size model, but first I needed to recover.

The Ford model apartment was bigger and fancier than The Agency’s. It was downtown, with a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading up to a mezzanine overlooking the living room. It had an expansive outdoor balcony with views of wooden water towers, callery pear trees, and the rapidly gentrifying tenements of the East Village. There was a bedroom on each floor, each containing a bunk bed and a single bed. Downstairs there was an additional tiny room, the size of a walk-in closet, with one bunk bed. I chose that room, because the day I moved was sweltering, and the bottom bunk was flush against the air conditioner. Growing up in Miami means getting used to air conditioners running full-bore, like power generators. Nothing brings me back to my childhood like the sensation of stepping out of a freezing, hermetically sealed home into a physical, visceral blast of wall-solid tropical humidity.

I didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes between Ford and The Agency: a scuffle over my contract, over money, over various legalities.

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