Jean Campbell reveals she was deemed ‘too big’ for brand

“At the time it made me feel pretty worthless. I think the idea that this is ‘too big’ is shocking to say the least. But looking back I feel compassion for how I felt as I believed it was coming from people with such vision and influence.

“Today I know how unhealthy and dysfunctional that is. Now I can say with confidence that there is no greater beauty than love. The sadness in my eyes is a result of how disempowered this made me feel and how reductive it is to measure ‘beauty’ by size. It’s an inside job no matter what size you are.”

Expanding on her post in a piece for British Vogue today, Campbell said the photo was “taken late at night to prove my size to a well-known luxury brand, who were trying to cancel the exclusive they had with me at the last minute”.

“Despite having recently undergone invasive hip surgery in which the left side of my pelvis was broken in three places, readjusted, and fixed in place by three six-inch screws, my measurements were unchanged,” she wrote.

“And yet, here was a respected brand telling me otherwise – telling me that I was not thin enough, not good enough to wear their clothes.”

Campbell added that in the past, she would “focus on all the things that I thought were ‘wrong’ about me and the easiest thing to pick on, in my case, was my appearance”.

“After all, as a model, you are taught that your face and your body add up to the sum of your worth. So, when some of the most influential and powerful names in the industry are telling you there is something wrong with how you look, how are you supposed to feel?”

Fellow models and friends of Campbell’s took to the comments to voice their support.

“Thank you Jeanie,” British model Adwoa Aboah wrote. “I can’t tell you how many people including myself needed this.”

“Thank you for voicing this! It’s insane what people in the industry say about model’s bodies and expects us to not internalize it somehow,” Romanian model Andreea Diaconu commented.

“My newest favorite one is ‘she’s a healthy girl’ with ‘healthy’ used as a derogatory term. Tells a lot about where we are as an industry if we fetishize eating disorders and use ‘healthy’ as a slur.

“I fear the Ozempic era is just going to make this worse, so thank you again for speaking about this so beautifully.”