Fashion Statement: Magali Amadei

This is me on the cover of Cosmopolitan, back when they actually put models on the covers of women's magazines. My hair is so perfectly windswept. My boobs are so...huge. Thanks to some chicken cutlets in the bustier (it's the oldest fashion trick in the book, people), some cleavage taping and "airbrushing" (For all you youngsters: that's what they called it before Photoshop was a household name), I look like a canary-clad vixen ready to take on the world. Pictures can be deceiving.

Actually, I was too busy bingeing and purging to take on much of anything in those days. I was bulimic through the height of my modeling career. Every time I saw myself on the cover of a magazine, I marveled that I was able to make it through the photo shoot. I felt like a fraud. So in 1999, after I took a time out to get myself healthy, I decided to tell the story that never came through in any of those pictures. I haven't shut up since.

I still work as a model. Just call me the Energizer Bunny. I don't blame the fashion industry for causing my eating disorder, but I do talk about the fact that it was the absolute worst place for a 17-year-old bulimic perfectionist to have found herself. I have a daughter now. I want her to grow up with a strong self-esteem and a complete understanding of how all the glossy fantasies are created. I want to see changes in the fashion and beauty industries, too. In a way, the 5 Resolutions are a wish list. I think anyone in the industry can follow them, and I'll keep doing this work until everyone does. Believe me when I tell you that I can keep going, and going, and going...

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