Supermodel Emme told her mostly female audience about some of the body image problems she had while growing up. On campus to kick off National Eating Disorders Week, she said that while she was not anorexic or bulimic, she experienced some of the disordered eating associated with those problems.

Model urges students to take pride in their bodies

Supermodel Emme will never forget the shame and humiliation she felt as a preteen girl, when her stepfather encircled her thighs with magic marker and drew on her stomach to show her how she was failing at maintaining the perfect weight. Determined to win her new stepfather's love and approval, Emme didn't initially fight this procedure or the regular weigh-ins to which he also subjected her, she told her audience at a Calhoun College master's tea on March 1. But finally one day, she raced out of her bedroom to wash off the marks and begged him, "Please, please, stop, no more, no more!" Later, while at a swimming pool, she was mortified when a group of boys noticed on her legs the red marks left by her furious scrubbing. It wasn't until many years later that Emme was able to understand that her stepfather's preoccupation with his own and his family members' weight was fueled by his own lack of self-esteem, which contributed to his having a serious eating disorder, she said. Emme, the first plus-size woman to achieve supermodel status, came to campus to kick off National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Her visit was sponsored by Calhoun College and the student-run Eating Concerns Hotline and Outreach at Yale (ECHO). In addition to the tea, the model also took part in an evening discussion on body image. At the tea, attended by a handful of men and a large gathering of women, Emme described how she became dissatisfied with her own body when she was very young and began to have periods of disordered eating when she was attending preparatory school. "Every time I'd come home from prep school I would [cut down on] eating to try to lose weight, so that I would be at the level I was when I left for school," she said. "I wasn't anorexic or bulimic, but there were fringes of those disorders. I wouldn't eat and then would overeat." Her eating problems could have been more severe if she hadn't been an athlete, admitted Emme, who won a full scholarship to Syracuse University to compete on the women's varsity crew team. Her big-boned frame and heft made her a strong rower, and Emme was invited to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials and several U.S. National Team Trials. But while she was comfortable with her body as an athlete, she said that there was another side to her "that didn't feel right, either in clothes or naked." The images of women Emme saw in magazines didn't calm her "inner turmoil" about her body and self-image, said the supermodel. "What I saw were one-dimensional images, where there was not even a multiplicity of ethnicity," she explained. "The women were all very, very thin -- very, very waif-like. I kept thinking, 'This is not my culture. I see women [in daily life] of all different shapes and sizes.' It was all very confusing to me. What are you supposed to be? How are you supposed to be?" After getting married in 1989, Emme began counseling and was able to confront some of her own problems with self-esteem and body image. It was during her own therapy that Emme came to understand the impact her stepfather's problems had on her. "If you do not heal your past, you will pass it on. It's inevitable," Emme emphasized to her audience. Sadly, her stepfather "didn't have the emotional nutrients to heal himself," the model said, and recently committed suicide. Today, Emme said, she is comfortable with herself as a size 14-16 woman, and she lectures around the country about issues of body image and self-esteem. As the host of "Fashion Emergency" on E! Entertainment, she gives fashion advice to women of all sizes. She also writes a monthly "Ask Emme" column in Mode magazine and is the author of "True Beauty -- Positive Attitudes & Practical Tips from the World's Leading Plus Size Model." More recently, she started her own clothing line for plus-size women. People magazine has selected her twice as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People" and other magazines, such as Glamour and Ladies Home Journal, have also honored her in recent years. The 5-foot-11-inch Emme said she was astounded when the Ford Agency offered her a modeling career in 1989 but told her that they would prefer that she be a size 14, rather than the size 12 she was then. "I said, 'You want me to gain weight?' I made a size 14 quite quickly," she laughed. Though she was the first woman of that size to become a leading model, increasing numbers of women are now breaking into the field who don't fit the standard mold for models -- which is a size 2, 4 or 6. "Less than 5% of women in the country are that thin," the supermodel said. Since gaining fame as a supermodel, she has been approached by numerous women and men who have admitted to eating disorders and have sought her advice on how to get help. "I'm now meeting a lot of men, including CEOs of companies and business executives, who sequester me to say 'I'm a bulimic; I need help,'" said Emme. "Eating disorders are not just a female issue, though females, predominantly, are hit hard by them." Now 37 and several months pregnant with her first child, Emme said she currently weighs over 200 pounds, but is proud of her body and its motherly roundness. In fact, she said, she recently posed nude for a major publication. She beseeched the members of her audience to eat healthy foods and exercise and to take pride in their bodies regardless of their size, noting that all people have a natural weight. "You have this body for the rest of your life," she said. "At least live in it as a kind of celebration so that you can do all you're meant to in this short life." The supermodel is pushing for more research on eating and body image disorders (she was the first model invited to speak about these issues before a Congressional subcommittee in Washington, D.C.) and urged the audience to speak out against society's glamorization of extreme thinness. "We need to let people know what we are willing to stand for and what we are not," she stressed. 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