Like a number of top plus-size models, Crystal Renn began her career as an industry-standard thin model. But unlike some of those others, Crystal was never naturally slim. An agency scout offered to sign her at the age of 14, but only on the condition that she would lose a ridiculous fifty pounds. Crystal fanatically exercised and starved herself under 115 pounds to get the job. Her continuing weight loss took a toll on her health to the point that feelings of frailty and constant exhaustion horrified her. So Crystal resolved to begin eating normally again, and after returning to her original weight, she signed with the Ford modeling agency's plus-size division.
"I'm actually truly healed," she says, at a size 12-14 with healthy measurements of 38-30-42, "and I'm loving this job right now!" Among her many successes, Jean Paul Gaultier choose her for the high honor of escorting him down the runway at the close of his 2005 fashion show in Paris. While many beautiful women tend to look better in live motion than in still photographs, Crystal is just the opposite. In television interviews she looks pretty, but ordinary -- and yet she's pure magic in front of the photographer's lens, throwing out a smoldering sexuality that recalls classic pin-up beauties. Crystal Renn is the very definition of photogenic.