Once upon a time, Katie Halchishick was pulling in six figures a year as a plus-size model. Then she experienced a strange paradox of the modeling world firsthand: she lost weight, and her contracts vanished. Agencies told her that in order to find work she’d either need to gain the weight back to pursue plus-size gigs, or lose more weight to pursue a traditional modeling career. Turns out the modeling industry, known for valuing thinness above all else, does acknowledge a plus-size modeling market, but the sizes in between 4 and 10? In the modeling world, they don’t exist. Now Halchishick is out to change that. She’s started her own agency, Natural Model Management, representing models of previously ignored sizes and “encouraging models to find a healthy balance in life and in their bodies.” We wish Halchishick well in her new endeavor and hope the idea catches on. More diversity in the modeling world is always a good thing, because, as we all know, “natural” bodies come in many shapes and sizes. [via Fashionista]
