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  • a lot of the times I would get the question like, What's it like if you're the curvy girl on set next to all the skinny or girls?

  • Fine.

  • They don't treat me like a zoo animal.

  • I'm a model.

  • I'm a model.

  • I'm I'm I am a model.

  • When I was about 15 16 years old and I was in Paris and I was waiting downstairs to do a casting for a runway show, they told me that I couldn't go up because they already found a girl of my kind.

  • I cried the whole night and I couldn't understand why somebody who would not even take a look at my book because of my color.

  • I don't know why I was labeled that curly hair isn't classy.

  • That's so fucking annoying and rude.

  • My first season, they wanted to straighten my hair, every show, every show, and that really damaged my hair does like old French like hair stylist or just like old guys doing hair.

  • And I'm like how how the fuck are you going to do my hair when you're bald?

  • When I worked with Iman, she told me that back in the day in her days they would do their own hair and makeup.

  • And I thought that was genius because some of the hair stylist would put water in my hair or gel.

  • People just did not know how to do my hair.

  • They refused to straighten my edges, which is like, really important to a black girl.

  • Me and Jordan.

  • We stopped speaking to each other for a time in our career because people would tell her how we shouldn't be friends, because it's this industry where it's either one or the other, and they're not gonna choose you both.

  • And then one day we woke up and we we went to set and we spoken.

  • We thought it was just so silly and we're just so much stronger together.

  • There was only a few agencies really working with Corporal.

  • I went into all the agencies and they're like, No, even then, like the plus size industry was still very homogeneous and like what it was to be a curve model.

  • I was too weird.

  • I always said I'm the byork of the curve industry.

  • I'm a fucking freak.

  • I was rejected by everyone I saw except one agency.

  • I was a size six, and I was told either to lose £20 or sign as a plus size model.

  • No signing the contract.

  • Have said.

  • What does that mean for me to be a plus size model?

  • Will I still be a model?

  • Because they made it seem like it was something so different.

  • You want me as a curve person to the way that you see fit.

  • It's not nuanced that you can't be back and be chic.

  • You can be fat and be cool.

  • You can't be fat into anything.

  • Besides be a stereotype, either lazy or glam, when so many people are given the opportunity to be so many different things took many years for it to dawn on me that I wasn't seeing any makeup castings.

  • I wasn't seen any hair castings.

  • I wasn't really doing any editorials or wasn't being able to be in the magazines that I read.

  • And so that's when I think really we we all I'll say we all the girls of like the plus industry started to kind of wake up in a light bulb.

  • Went on was like, Well, hold on a second, we're actually pretty fab and we shouldn't be seen You could always see when the curvy girls were coming through the door for a casting because we just came, like, full on to just say like I'm here and you need me.

  • My dad always said blesses so nobody can convey who you are.

  • But yourself, if you had told me I'm coming from South Sudan and I'll be a bright fishing, l I would have told you, like, don't be done.

  • I mean, I just remembered walking out in that outfit where it's all these little beads and all these similar stresses, you know, to know where their white coats, they're all standing there.

  • I mean, it is the first time that I burst into tears because, you know, my parents would have been really proud because it was deeper than just, you know, a fashion show.

  • I grew up between East and south of India.

  • I was scouted when I was 25.

  • I honestly did not ever think I would be modeling.

  • I'm here.

  • That's a big deal.

  • You know, like I haven't seen girls like me on the runway before.

  • I could never flip through a magazine and see somebody wearing a hijab and When you don't see something, it's really hard to believe it, but it's also really hard to even picture yourself as a cover girl as somebody who's a model.

  • It was signed toe I MG models, and it was a first for them to have a hijab wearing woman.

  • Sometimes I say it and it feels like I'm reading a script from a crazy movie.

  • Like what in the what?

  • There's been so much changes.

  • First of all, I'm not the only South Sudanese girl on a runway, huh?

  • There are love, really amazing young girls.

  • I just had to stop for one moment the other day backstage at Marc Jacobs.

  • All of a sudden, I'm like, This is no home.

  • This is Marc Jacobs backstage.

  • We're talking in Dinka Fallen dink.

  • I was so cool.

  • The industry is changing, but it still has a long way to go.

  • Abs in it flows.

  • There's gonna be the same people who wanted it to be only thin white models, reclaiming that it's important to create space sustainably.

  • It needs to come literally first, fashion.

a lot of the times I would get the question like, What's it like if you're the curvy girl on set next to all the skinny or girls?

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