It’s no secret society has placed ridiculous focus and pressure on women’s beauty standards for decades, especially in the modeling world where thinner is usually the winner.
However, thanks to body-positive movements like #EffYourBeautyStandards created by model Tess Holliday and others like Ashley Graham taking the industry by storm, a cultural shift is finally happening.
One former model, Liza Golden-Bhojwani, went viral with a recent post on her Instagram in which she shared a photo of her gorgeous curves today beside a waif-ish photo from her days of eating just 500 calories at the start of her career in 2012.
While she had an “adrenaline rush” from shows like Fashion Week in New York and London, Golden-Bhojwani shared in the photo’s caption that she knew something had to change after she fainted prepping a low-cal meal in her apartment.
“I’ll just eat a little bit more so I don’t feel so horrible,” she wrote. She eventually began “giving in to every craving even though I knew this was such an important time in my career.”
As she gained a few pounds, Golden-Bhojwani upped some of her workouts and continued to work, booking a Dolce & Gabbana gig among others, but “received online criticism about my thighs looking fat.”
Despite being named to Vogue’s illustrious “Freshman Model Class of 2013,” list, she began getting pulled from shows “because at that measurement you will just simply not book any shows,” she wrote on Instagram.
Like many who struggle with their weight and body image, Golden-Bhojwani beat herself up for not letting go of “my worst enemy, FOOD.” A few years later, she started doing more work and eating healthier and became “the fittest I ever was” before, “but still I wasn’t fit enough for the likes of (Victoria’s Secret) or other brands.”
After traveling to India, she met the man who she eventually moved to India to marry and became interested in returning to modeling. This time, however, it would be on her terms — and her own inspiring beauty standards.
“Why am I fighting against my body?” she wrote. “And that’s what I did, slowly, slowly I was coming into my true body form. My natural self, not my forced self. … It is mine, and my soul is happy.
“Maybe I was made to share this story and spread the message of body love to all the women out there struggling.”
While it’s sad women still have battle such scrutiny about their bodies, stories like Golden-Bhojwani’s serve as a reminder that they are, by far, not alone and should be inspired to say #EffYourBeautyStandards and create their own.
