Charli Howard's family didn't want her to be a model.
Charli Howard
The 28-year-old beauty - who suffered from anorexia and bulimia from the age of 13 - had always admired the "glamorous" and skinny catwalk stars of the 1990s when she was growing up, but her father in particular didn't want her to follow in their footsteps.
She said: "It was a massive family argument when I said I was going to be a model.
"But thinking back to my room as a teenager, it really was just images of models. I remember a particular picture of top Russian models [that was on her wall], their hip bones were jutting out and there was a massive gap between their thighs.
"Kate Moss, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, they were the big celebrities. It was such a different life to what I had. These women were glamorous, thin, they had money, they had boyfriends.
"As someone with eating disorders, you associate happiness with a body shape. You think, "These images of smiling, super-anorexic women, that's what I've got to look like.' "
Charli famously wrote an explosive Facebook post in 2015 calling out those in the industry who had repeatedly urged her to lose weight and though she knew it could spell the end for her career, she didn't care.
She told Stella magazine: "I'd seen one girl who had [spoken out] before me, and she never worked again.
"I was done with modelling, I didn't care about the repercussions. That night when I posted it, I had two or three people call me and say, "You need to delete that.' "
In the first years since her post went viral, the industry has grown more diverse but Charli still thinks there's more to do.
She said: "Plus-size models are now in images everywhere and that just didn't exist before.
"I still do wish that there was a bit more diversity, but we are embracing curves. It's stranger now if you see a line-up of models on the page and there isn't a curvier one in there. If a brand doesn't do it, it reflects badly on them."