As a model, Olivia Smith was constantly fixated on the numbers on the scale.
Now a math secondary education junior, Smith was repeatedly approached her junior year of high school by a mall kiosk worker who asked if she wanted to be a model. She believed the setup to be a scam. But as she pursued the possibility further, she deemed the worker truthful. Within a month, she signed a contract and became a model.
To prepare for modeling, she began to train in runway walking. Smith met with ex-model-turned-designer Adrian Alicea to perfect her strut. After purchasing six inch heels, Smith said she walked up and down an apartment hallway three hours a day for a week.
Smith also began working out more and eating healthier.
“It started out as ‘Oh, I won’t eat as much bread,’ and I started losing weight really fast,” Smith said.
Then Smith began toexercise on the elliptical every day and was only consuming about 500 calories.
Four months after signing the contract, she booked two small runway shows in New York Fashion Week. Smith was a model for Nico and Adrian and Ivy Higa, a designer from Project Runway. For the two shows, her 5-foot-9-inch frame weighed in at 100 pounds.
“When you say ‘skin and bones,’ I was literally skins and bones,” Smith said.
She saw other models act wary about what they were eating. Some went to extremes like throwing up before shows.
In March 2010, Smith recognized her eating disorder. She recalled being at a photo shoot in a swimsuit and the photographer said “If I had known you were this tiny, I wouldn’t have hired you.”
“It wasn’t until he said that that I realized my friends and family weren’t just telling me that,” she said. “I was really tiny. When you have an eating disorder, your brain is totally whack. I thought I looked 20 pounds heavier than I actually was.”
Without being formally diagnosed as anorexic, Smith began to treat herself by cutting back on exercise and eating more. She said she tried to eat things she used to eat, like bread, and she had to get in the mindset of “this is what normal people eat.”
Smith put on 10 pounds and booked nine shows in New York Fashion Week in Sept. 2010, but in her third season of walking in Fashion Week, Smith only booked three shows. She said at a fitting before one of the shows the designers referred to her as the “big girl.” After that moment, she walked away from modeling.
“Even though I was happy [modeling], I wasn’t really happy,” Smith said. “I was trying to put my happiness in the materialistic world, which is not what I needed. That wasn’t my identity. My identity is in Christ. The joy I have in Christ is far better than any joy of a runway show.”
She said her parents and the Bible were big parts of her recovery. Smith rededicated her life to her faith, and in 2011 she became a part of the University’s Baptist Collegiate Ministry.
“When you say ‘skin and bones,’ I was literally skin and bones.”