[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Former Victoria’s Secret Angel Erin Heatherton opened up about going to extreme lengths to maintain the lingerie brand’s unrealistic beauty standards and demands while modeling for them between 2010 and 2013.
In an upcoming episode of the podcast Fallen Angel, per People, the 32-year-old model said she feared losing her job during her time with the company due to her weight, expressing:
“Where things started to go south for me was when I hit, I think it was 25 [years old]. There was this certain point where everything that I was doing just didn’t yield the same results. I was just a little bit bigger. In retrospect, that’s just biology and how the body works. You’re not the same size when you’re 18 to when you’re 25.”
Truth! Despite it being completely natural for her body to change over the years, Heatherton claimed she still felt pressured by the brand to lose weight and turned to a “nutritionist to the stars” who ended up prescribing her amphetamine-like appetite suppressant and hormone injections:
“[He] started me on this diet pill called phentermine, which my therapist later called ‘bathwater meth.’”
Opening up about the desperation she felt at the time, she continued:
“I don’t know. I was just like, ‘Let me Lance Armstrong this because I’m renovating my condo. I can’t lose my job right now.’ I started injecting myself with HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin). I was just like, ‘Help me lose weight. What do people do?’ He suggested something this other model did that worked for her. This is this nutritionist to the stars, whatever. I don’t know. I started like a diabetic injecting my stomach every morning.”
Looking back, Heatherton feels her behavior is similar to “emotional cutting” because she was “so against” what she was doing but “was just reluctantly doing it almost to feel the pain or feel how wrong it was.” Even more so, she now recognizes that Victoria’s Secret never cared about her health:
“I don’t have any faith that these people really cared about me. You know what I’m saying? It’s just about business.”
And although she’s made peace with the situation, Heatherton decided to speak out in order to help others who are struggling with body image issues:
“I share my story again because I don’t want anyone to have an eating disorder or hate their bodies. I know what that feels like. I speak out only for people that might hear me and think, ‘Hey, that makes sense,’ or maybe that might change their attitude towards how they treat themselves.”
She added:
“I think that aspirational [body] goals can exist without illness and eating disorders. When you have an eating disorder, you lose your freedom. When you are confined to this shape it consumes your life.”
Wow…
Reactions to what Erin had to say about her time at Victoria’s Secret? Let us know in the comments (below).
[Image via Andres Otero/WENN, WENN]
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