Shaped by the Industry: Female Fashion Models’ Perceptions of Aesthetic Labour, Body Governance and Disordered Eating

Female fashion models face intense bodily surveillance within a competitive and largely unregulated industry. While many young recruits endure the industry’s initial demands, less is known about how these formative experiences are later interpreted. Grounded in feminist and phenomenological perspectives, this article presents an inductive analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with female models aged 25+, exploring entry into modelling, socialization into industry norms, and longer-term effects on body image, eating attitudes, and embodied practices. Five interconnected themes were identified: growing up “superfast”; learning to eat less; being treated as a product; boundary violations as a darker side of modelling; and building resilience within a callous industry. Early immersion in modelling culture shaped psychological development, with self-worth becoming closely tied to conformity with a narrowly defined thin ideal. Aesthetic labour extended beyond paid work to continuous bodily regulation and self-surveillance, producing a persistent tension between the lived, sensing body (Leib) and the body as an object for evaluation (Körper). Disordered eating emerged as a normalised employment strategy. While maturity could soften this process, participants described ongoing attempts to reconcile bodily needs with external judgements. The fashion industry thus emerges as a concentrated site of objectification, with enduring consequences for embodied wellbeing.