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Cara Delevingne isn’t afraid to criticize the industry that made her famous, and she airs her grievances about modeling in a new interview with the Sunday Times.
Delevingne was a teen when she started out, and because she was just a beginner, she didn’t feel she could fight back against skin-baring and sexually suggestive shoots. “I am a bit of a feminist and it makes me feel sick,” she says now. “It’s horrible and it’s disgusting. [We’re talking about] young girls. You start when you are really young and you do, you get subjected to… not great stuff.”
The British beauty reveals she became so stressed over the work environment that she would have psoriasis breakouts, leading makeup artists to cover her entire body with foundation at “every single show.” She recalls, “People would put on gloves and not want to touch me because they thought it was, like, leprosy or something.” In fact, being a sought-after face just made Delevingne feel worse about herself.
“It didn’t make me grow at all as a human being,” she admits, saying that she hardly had a “good time” during her rapid rise. “And I kind of forgot how young I was. I felt so old.” Delevingne explains, “I was, like, fight and flight for months. Just constantly on edge. It is a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse.”
It all left the Paper Towns star “feel a bit hollow,” and now she’s resolved not do “fashion work any more.” Delevingne, who has said her goal was always to be an actress, acknowledges that the movie industry is not without its own issues, and even confesses that she’s already dealt with sexual harassment. But now she has newfound strength go along with her new path.
“I am very good at standing up for myself now, and for other people. If there is injustice I will flip out. If someone is crossing a line, they will know about it and so will everyone else,” she tells the Sunday Times. Delevingne further says, “I am a lot harder than I was and I feel like all of that modeling, life, rejection, everything, was preparation for this, and now that I am doing this I am the happiest person in the whole world.”
TELL US: What do you think of Delevingne’s complaints about modeling and her intention to give it up?
