Ex-Victoria’s Secret Angel Kylie Bisutti’s life has drastically changed – for the better.
The winner of the 2009 Victoria’s Secret Angel Search is opening up about her horrific experiences as a lingerie and swimsuit model, and why she walked away.
She quit to honor God and her husband, but not before some startling realizations.
Those experiences include starving herself, being forced to pose topless at age 16, and being used by the industry to sell sex despite her religious beliefs.
Kylie Bisutti, who admits that she wanted to be a model at a very young age, moved to NYC when she was just a teen and was thrust into the toxic world of modeling.
“New York really opened my eyes to the dark side of the modeling industry,” she admits.
“One of my roommates was so bulimic she would involuntarily throw up when she ate. She would go to sleep crying every night and just look at herself in the mirror.”
“She was thinking that she was so fat. And she was so thin.”
Bisutti, who had no problem staying away from temptations like alcohol, admits she experienced unwanted sexual attention from men in the industry.
“I had photographers and male models hitting on me constantly. Once, a photographer actually pushed me up against the wall and tried to kiss me.”
Although she was attending church at the time and reading her Bible, the young model was still talked into posing topless when she was only 16.
“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.”
Despite eating what she felt where healthy recipes of oatmeal, fruits and vegetables, 5’10” Kyle fell to 115 pounds and still wasn’t being booked for shows.
She asked her agent why she wasn’t getting any jobs.
“It’s because you look like a fat cow right now, Kylie. You need to lose 2 inches off of your hips,” the agent told her, pushing her toward starvation.
Bisutti met her future husband, a devout Christian, when she was only 18, and it was he who encouraged her to enter the Victoria’s Secret Angel search.
When she won, she was thrilled to be an Angel, and finally felt okay about her body image … but soon enough, other problems would arise for her.
Kylie Bisutti says she was pushed by Victoria’s Secret executives to “get together with” a celebrity whose eye she had caught at the after-party.
Despite having a husband, she was encouraged to play down her marriage and to flirt with “everyone all the time” as a means of building up the brand.
She eventually came to the sad realization that she was being sold as a sex symbol, and could not take it anymore. She left the brand, for good.
Two years after winning the contest, Bisutti decided to get out of the industry and sent out a tweet that read “I quit being a VS model to be a Proverbs 31 wife.”
As for what that means, Proverbs 31 is known for its praise of the good wife, and the definition of a perfect wife or “ideal woman” in the Bible.
Bisutti, who lives in Montana with her husband, realizes she sacrificed “millions of dollars” by hanging up her Angel wings but has “never been more content.”
Today, she’s focusing on creating a Christian clothing line and is releasing a book, I’m No Angel: From Victoria’s Secret Model To Role Model, on May 14.