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Gigi Hadid Explains Why She Wrote Her Instagram Open Letter—And What She Wants to Come of It

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gigi hadid

It’s hard to imagine Gigi Hadid, all long legs, curvy silhouette, and blonde beach-babe hair, being told she’s not modeling material. But after recent appearances at New York and Milan Fashion Weeks, Hadid found herself the target of body shaming on social media, with commenters taking to Hadid’s own Instagram to share their opinions. “These are obviously also people that don’t think of you as an actual human with actual feelings, which I think is a really big problem right now in social media,” Hadid said, speaking exclusively with Vogue.com. “There are people who feel like they’re able to hide behind their usernames and their private accounts, who feel like they can say whatever they want and it won’t affect anyone. I try not to pay attention to it that much, but it got to a point where I started to feel self-conscious about certain things—in the way that I felt that my walk, for example, is unique and I also felt like I needed to improve it. When you see that people are not only saying [negative things] but are saying them in a very, very hurtful way, you start to pay more attention to it.”

But rather than let certain mean spirits get the best of her, Hadid responded to the negativity with an open letter crafted over several days and posted to her Instagram page. In it, she offers up a sincere and smart take on body acceptance and her position on some of the season’s most high-profile catwalks, saying she knows she doesn’t fit within the stick-skinny runway mold—and that she’s happy to be representing a different body type in fashion. “At first, my post was for the people on social media that were being negative toward me because I genuinely do trust the people in fashion. I know that the designers that have me in their shows have me for a reason, I know that the designers that don’t have me in their shows don’t have me for a reason, and I accept either way,” she explained, citing Tommy Hilfiger and Versace as two examples of shows she was well-suited to appear in.

 

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Anna Sui Spring 2016

Photographed by Kevin Tachman

But the post did more than just educate the haters out there, it also brought a whole lot of love back to Hadid herself. “I honestly broke down, I started crying at the multiple text messages I got today from everyone, from Victoria’s Secret models to plus-size models to people like Tyra Banks, who posted [the Instagram letter] and who is someone I’ve looked up to for my entire life. Those are the people who really touched me because I know those are the people who are the most emotionally affected within the fashion industry by this type of criticism.”

Hadid sees her message as one that resonates outside of her personal struggles, too. “I talked to Taylor Hill about mentioning her name before I did this interview,” Hadid says of her friend and fellow model who walked at Milan Fashion Week. “She’s someone I’ve known since she was 15, and has always had a slim, beautiful body but is still getting body shamed—while being a Victoria’s Secret Angel—for being too thin. People are calling her anorexic. She’s someone that accepted her body a long time ago and found what she thought was sexy—and obviously you need to go into shooting Victoria’s Secret feeling sexy. The fact that she can accept herself but people are still trying to body shame her really makes me upset. I think that it’s all types of body types that are being affected by this, it’s not just me. That’s what some people misunderstood in my message—that I wasn’t just at the end saying, ‘I love being sexy.’ It was the message that I love feeling sexy in myself and I’m not going to change it for other people’s opinions.”

 

gigi hadid
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Tommy Hilfiger Spring 2016

Photo: Getty Images


It’s perhaps her path to stardom, which was paved with a lot of naysayers, that gave her the thick skin she has today. Reflecting on her start in fashion, Hadid said, “I went to almost all of the agencies in New York when I first visited. A lot of them wanted to sign me but also kind of indirectly were telling me that I needed to change in some way. Some directly told me that I wouldn’t be a model unless I changed the way that my body looked. I signed with IMG because of how they supported me, who I am and who I already was. I always said I’m not going to change for anyone because I was really proud of who I was, and I thought that I already saw the industry starting to change [in a way] that I was really inspired by. I wanted to be one of those people that was representative of that change.” We’d venture she’s doing a pretty great job.

 

See how Gigi Hadid prepares for the Tommy Hilfiger Spring 2016 ready-to-wear show:

 

 

The post Gigi Hadid Explains Why She Wrote Her Instagram Open Letter—And What She Wants to Come of It appeared first on Vogue.


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