A Victoria’s Secret woman or Proverbs 31?

By: American Decency Staff

The adage, “Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true” is something Kylie Buscutti learned the hard way.   As a young girl, Kylie dreamed of becoming a supermodel.  To her the pinnacle of success was epitomized by being a Victoria’s Secret lingerie model.  At the tender age of 19 she reached her goal when she beat out 10,000 other girls to win the 2009 Victoria’s Secret Angel Search competition.

However, life as a “Angel” was not very sublime.  Last year Kylie announced she left a lucrative modeling career to become a Proverbs 31 woman.

The New York Post reports how Kylie, as a very young Christian, came to the conclusion her former dream job was actually a nightmare:

I’m lying on a bed wearing a tight, little T-shirt and boy-cut panty bottoms while camera flashes keep popping away. I’m giving the camera that seductive, bombshell look I’d become famous for.

“Pull the top further up,” the FHM photographer encouraged me. “Hold up the covers like you don’t have any panties on.”

I didn’t feel comfortable but he kept urging me on.

“This is what Victoria’s Secret models do,” he said. “This is why they hired you. If you want to be like Gisele, this is what you have to do.”

That’s when it hit me. I was being paid to strip down and pose provocatively to titillate men. It wasn’t about modeling clothes anymore; I felt like a piece of meat.

The next day, I broke down and started sobbing. I was in my bedroom and dropped to my knees and started to pray.

“God, why did you have me win the Victoria’s Secret Angel competition if it was going to make me feel this way? I’m not honoring my husband. I just want answers!”

That was two years ago. Today, I’m living in Montana with my husband, enjoying the fresh air and volunteering with our church.

The old me would never have believed that I gave up my career for this quiet, country life. When I was a little girl growing up in Las Vegas, surrounded by billboards of half-dressed women, I dreamed of becoming a Victoria’s Secret Angel.

I thought the models I saw defined beauty, and beauty meant you were important. I would watch the Victoria’s Secret fashion shows at home on TV and imitate the models’ signature struts when I’d walk to my bedroom at night.  …

Until I was 15, modeling was the most important thing in my life, but then a girl I barely knew at school invited me to her church’s youth group. That party changed my life. I’d never been to church, but hearing that Jesus died for my sins was just amazing to me.

Shortly after that party, although I was just becoming a Christian, I didn’t think twice about moving to New York to pursue my dream of becoming a model.

I moved in with four other models on the Lower East Side. One of my roommates was a Christian, and we’d take the long subway ride to the Upper West Side to go to church, but we were the exceptions. I’d see girls getting into black SUVs with club promoters at night and getting home when the sun was coming up the next day — teenagers my age!

I was never tempted by alcohol because I have relatives who were alcoholics, so I knew how destructive it could be, but I could relate to wanting the attention that those older men would give the girls. But the girls didn’t seem happy, and it broke my heart.

Over the next two years, New York really opened my eyes to the dark side of the modeling industry. …

And while I was still going to church and consulting my Bible, I was so desperate to succeed in the business that I complied when my agent told me, “All models have a topless shot.” I was only 16 when I posed for mine.

I pretty much restricted my diet to oatmeal, fruits and vegetables to meet runway expectations. I’m 5-foot-10, and I got down to 115 pounds with measurements of 34-24-34. In February 2007, New York Fashion Week was approaching, and while everyone I knew was being sent out to auditions, I wasn’t.

“Why am I still going on test shoots?” I asked my agent.

“It’s because you look like a fat cow right now, Kylie. You need to lose 2 inches off of your hips,” the agent said.

After cutting my diet even further to just pineapples, watermelon and liters of water while exercising two hours a day, six days a week, I finally dropped down to 108 pounds, which satisfied my agent, and the gigs started rolling in.  …

Two years after I won the Angel Search, I realized I didn’t want to model anything that sold sex. At the time, a Victoria’s Secret lingerie show was airing on TV, and I was looking at Twitter and saw loads of tweets from women comparing themselves to the impossible image of the models.

It made me think back to earlier in my modeling career, when my 8-year-old cousin was watching me put on makeup and said to me, “I’m going to throw up my food so I look like you.” I realized my career was sending a bad message to women about confidence and body image.

I was traveling with my husband on a business trip and, from the hotel room, I sent out my own tweet.

“I quit being a VS model to be a Proverbs 31 wife.”

(Proverbs 31 talks about being a virtuous and capable wife that a husband can trust. It says, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised.”) …

Today, I’m focused on creating a Christian clothing line, speaking tours and my blog, imnoangel.org. My clothing line comes out next month, and it will feature models of all shapes and sizes promoting our modest clothes. I want girls to see people who look like them, so they feel good about themselves.

Read more of Kylie’s compelling account at: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/gave_up_modeling_for_god_IDcrhkzPzHgtLCcQmkgHxK#ixzz2RaIBbGmA

How refreshing to see a young woman turn her back upon the siren’s song of fame and take such a stand!   

Sadly, millions of young girls are continually being drawn into the false image of femininity pushed by Victoria’s Secret as they indoctrinate young girls – as they did with Kylie – that beauty is equated with eroticism, nudity, and titillating men.

Thankfully for Kylie, she discovered what true beauty is – becoming a woman who seeks after God, rather than pleasing men.  However, countless young girls are still buying the lie that stares them in the face every time they go to the mall and walk past a Victoria’s Secret window display. 

Take Action!  Click here to send a message to Victoria’s Secret regarding the damage they perpetuate both for young girls, as well as young men who, as Kylie stated, learn to view women as nothing more than “a piece of meat.”

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