Such a pretty face, ohhh its like someone saying to you awe you are such a pretty Fat girl…ohhh how I despised that comment..and still do. What makes people think that it is okay to say this? It’s called a backhanded compliment – it doesn’t seem so bad at first… as a matter of fact, it feels like a real compliment, initially’ its kind of nice, like wow, Thank You! Then as time passes you realize it’s what isn’t said that actually hurts. During my existence  I have observed that the implied meaning of that statement is…” too bad your ass is so fat”or “Too bad the rest of you is crap.”

Growing up, I was the taller overweight kid, I loved food so much and looked forward to eating more than anything, by third grade I was about 10 pounds heavier than my classmates, this continued til the 6th grade when I made the cheerleading squad, I was more active and I shrank down to a normal proportioned size, finally!!… I was content with my size. I come from a military family, and my father served 20 years and finally decided to retire, he chose Myrtle Beach, S.C. because he loved the beautiful white beaches, and the amazing weather, it was quite a change from Montgomery,AL.  I started high school at Myrtle Beach High School, and was accepted immediately by my peers,… to my surprise, I was nominated miss freshman, and became the first freshman to ever be nominated for homecoming queen… I was pleased, and new that being thin helped with these accomplishments.

Being that it was the early 90’s two things really stood out Nirvana and heroin chic models, people were approaching me more and more about modeling so I decided to attend a convention for aspiring models, and received notice from a well known agency in N.Y.C., they sent my mom a letter a week after meeting me stating that I would be welcome to move to NY for the summer if I could lose 10-15 pounds by summer, 15 preferably, so basically they wanted me to be skin and bones… never the less it was an amazing opportunity,so me and my mom decided to at least try, Thus welcoming my new eating disorder, I was so miserable during the time I was losing weight, and lost all drive to pursue modeling by the summer, I decided it was something that just wasn’t meant to be, so I tried to go back to being a healthy kid in high school. Years passed and at 24, my daughter Maya was born, the most amazing thing that has ever happen to me, my weight hit an all time high, but the ironic thing was that I was happier with my body than I had ever been in my life!