Esmeralda Seay-Reynolds had just turned 15 years old when she was scouted by Click Model Management in New York. But the agency told the 5-foot-11, 130-pound hopeful that she wasn’t right because she looked “too mature,” code in fashion for a teen girl deemed “too heavy” because she has already developed curves. So she dropped 20 pounds and immediately signed with NEXT, an even bigger agency. Her ascent was swift, with the Pennsylvania native landing in the pages of Vogue and shooting campaigns for top couture brands like Chanel.
But the red flags emerged just as quickly. At 16, she was booked on a shoot with a photographer who had been publicly accused of sexual coercion. That same year, one of her representatives offered her some dangerous advice on how to stay catwalk thin. “I remember my agent saying, ‘Cotton balls are organic, so it’s fine if you just swallow them to make yourself feel full,’” she says. Around that time, Seay-Reynolds was runway ready and made the Fashion Week cut for Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Saint Laurent, Fendi and Marc Jacobs in New York, Paris and Milan. At her first-ever show, the backstage bathroom scene was troubling. “On either side of me were size zero girls puking their guts up,” she recalls. There was also a financial shocker. She says she received just $130 for the six weeks of grueling work. “I don’t know if that is how much I should have made or if my agency just…
