Inside the plus-size modelling agency where curvy beauties including Hayley Hasselhoff and Felicity Hayward don’t obsess over their weight and charge huge fees
Big girls are making big names for themselves in plus-size modelling — including David Hasselhoff's daughter Hayley, and rocker Steve Tyler's daughter Mia
PICTURE the scene. A curvy blonde woman is posing for a glamorous photoshoot.
She goes to sit on the lid of a wooden crate and crashes straight through it, ending up with her legs flailing in the air.
For most models, the idea that a prop couldn’t take their weight would be the stuff of nightmares.
But this is Hayley Hasselhoff, a renowned plus-size model and daughter of Baywatch legend David — and she finds it hilarious.
“Thankfully I was in the right outfit,” says Hayley, modestly dressed in jeans. “Imagine if I was in a dress. Not cute.”
Welcome to the world of plus-size fashion, where models don’t obsess over the numbers on the scales or spend their days nibbling lettuce.
In this far more realistic version of modelling, the women eat chips and Belgian waffles. They are scouted in fast food outlets and pubs.
Some of them even wear padding to bulk up.
But just like their so-called “straight” — that is, skinny — colleagues, these shapely beauties can command extra-large pay cheques and pose in some of the world’s most glamorous locations.
As one sassy girl puts it, the only real difference between them and the more traditional waifs and size zeros is these women aren’t “perpetually hungry”.
The lives of the plus-size models are revealed for the first time tonight as Channel 5 goes behind the scenes at London agency Milk Management, which specialises in ladies with fuller figures.
And the women on Curvy Girls Stripped Bare are not just body positive, they are unashamedly proud of their feminine figures.
There’s Hayley, who is a size 18 and revels in wearing clingy outfits during a shoot at The Sun’s studio to promote the charity campaign Jeans for Genes.
“I like how tight they are,” she says, admiring her voluptuous frame. “I like to feel secure. I want to feel like my body is accentuated.”
The American, 26, is a big advocate for putting curvy girls in high street clothing adverts and on catwalks.
She says: “Beauty comes in all different shapes and sizes.”
Then there’s Felicity Hayward, 30, one of the first plus-size models to star in a major make-up advert, for Mac.
The size 20 blonde says: “It always used to be ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ Now it’s ‘does my butt look big enough?’ ”
Milk was started seven years ago by former “straight” model Anna Shillinglaw.
Her career came to an end when she was 25 and piled on the pounds to become all of a size 10! It enraged her when a casting agent in New York looked her up and down “like I was a piece of s***”.
Anna, 41, says: “My agent suggested plus-size modelling and I had never been so insulted. Then he showed me a catalogue with curvy models and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler’s daughter, Liv, was in there and she looked so beautiful. I had a girl crush.”
Anna’s had the last laugh.
With 100 curvy girls on her books, ranging from size 12 to 26, she has put her models on the London Fashion Week catwalk as well as in high street adverts including some for H&M.
She says: “I’ve definitely seen a shift in the industry. You walk down the high street and I can be, ‘Oh there’s my model in Primark, there’s my model in Mango’.”
And the fees are as rounded as the waistlines.
The female plus-size clothing industry is worth £4.7billion. Shops such as M&S and online retailer Asos now have ranges for larger sizes.
The likes of Ashley Graham, the first plus-size model to feature on the cover of Sports Illustrated mag’s swimsuit issue and the 10th highest-earning model in the world last year, are, literally, changing the shape of the fashion industry.
At Milk, curvy models can start out earning £300 to £400 a day.
The lucky ones can go on to bring in £2,000 daily.
The really special ones can demand up to £20,000 a day, and Milk has even secured a contract for one girl that could buy a London flat outright.
And there’s room at Milk for every shape, including size 10-12 “inbetweeny” women . . . so long as the face fits.
But not everyone is happy about celebrating the fuller figure.
Earlier this year, Piers Morgan accused the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for “celebrating morbid obesity” by putting 21-stone Tess Holliday on the cover.
But half-Jamaican Sonny Turner argues that fatter doesn’t necessarily mean unfit. The 20-year-old says: “I definitely work to maintain my shape, like going to the gym. Just because you’re plus-sized doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be healthy.”
She started modelling at size 12 and had to wear padding to appear a size 16 — which is the size of the average British woman. McDonald’s meals and pizza mean she doesn’t have to fake it any more.
“This fat is making me money,” she says.
Sonny is sometimes embarrassed to say she’s a model, preferring to tell men she is a teacher.
Felicity, from London, understands why. She confidently poses in plunging lingerie, but says: “When you say ‘I’m a model’, people literally look you up and down.
“I can see their head working and they’re thinking ‘She’s fat, she’s not a model’.”
These ladies might not be told to shed the pounds, but that’s not to say Anna won’t ask them to change.
In the two-part documentary, she jokingly mimics one girl’s pout, telling a staff member the out-of-work model has got to “work on her facial expression”.
And despite falling in love with Lauren Frederick’s “beautiful face”, she urged the size-16 model to alter her hair colour and straighten her teeth before signing her.
Lauren has featured in a high-profile Ann Summers campaign, and in the second programme viewers see her land a coveted contract with a New York agency.
But it is a cut-throat industry and not everyone is so lucky.
Alo Hickey, who appears in the second episode, was scouted on Oxford Street to be a regular model when she was 14 but turned it down as she thought of herself as a “fat troll”.
Years later she signed up with Milk and admits her first curvy pay cheque was “more money than I’d seen in my entire life”.
But the 23-year-old was forced to turn to temp work to boost her income after she failed to get much work in modelling.
She says: “It’s massively brutal. We’re always sitting around, sharing some chips, discussing why we hate the industry and want to quit. Then we’ll get a job and it’ll be like, ‘Yes!’ ”
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Size-16 Alo also admits a lot of her work comes from “standing around in my pants for ten hours a day” at trade shows.
And even though she might not be wowing the crowds at Fashion Week or gracing covers of magazines, it still shows there is a demand for the larger lady.
Anna says: “I think there’s a massive movement, a massive change in the industry. People are bored of just seeing regular models. The consumers think this is cool, it’s refreshing.”
- Curvy Girls Stripped Bare starts on Channel 5 tonight at 10pm