MorgaineLaFay
goodirishgirl
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2001
- Posts
- 18,521
I am watching her on tv right now...I can't believe they call her a plus size model...She is so beauitful.
Carrie Otis
- Thread starter MorgaineLaFay
- Start date
modest mouse
Meating People is Easy
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2001
- Posts
- 8,363
Morgaine,
Agreed. She is gorgeous and the plus size notation is foolish. Here's an article I just found that you might care to read. I could only find the one pic(which accompanied the article) of her as she appears now. Pics at the bottom from her previous modeling work.
***
Carrie Otis turns a corner: Modeling at size 12
http://www.azcentral.com/rep/gifs2/0815otis.jpg
Joyce Wadler
New York Times News Service
Aug. 14, 2001 13:16:28
NEW YORK - Carre Otis, one-time cover girl of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, has done a number of shocking things in her life. She says she has been addicted to heroin; turned down a $1 million deal with Helena Rubinstein because, she claims, Mickey Rourke, her husband at the time, did not wish her to work; attempted suicide thrice; and been one of the first models, or so she believes, to have tattoos, one of which, now removed, contained the name of her ex.
"My one advice with tattoos is never write names on your body," said Otis, for all of her history an upbeat California girl. "Never, never, never, never!"
But now Carre Otis has done something really over the top: Become a size 12. Gained 30 pounds in less than a year. Posed as a cover girl for the September issue of Mode, the magazine that describes itself as "the new shape of fashion," which is to say, women of generous size. She is working next week for Lane Bryant.
No matter that at 5 feet 10 inches and 155 pounds, Otis looks gorgeous, actually slender, or that the average American woman is a size 14. In the fashion world, she is a plus size. What made Otis, who is 32, do it?
A charitable trek through Katmandu, says Otis, in her Michael Kors suede pants and ankle strap shoes from Barney's and a Theory blouse opened halfway to her front. She belongs to this group, Medicine for Nepal, and last October they made a trip to orphanages to dispense medicine and food and clothing. Suddenly Otis - who has, as she puts it, literally been on a diet for 17 years; who in the last year had starved herself once again to make the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated - had an epiphany.
"I was in an orphanage in Katmandu, and there was an infant that was totally swathed in cloth; it was dying," she said. "There was absolutely nothing anyone could do. No medical attention, no doctor, no food. Mothers are crying, mothers can't feed their babies. And it's just like, Whoa! All of this time I've spent being unhappy with my precious human body and it gets me where I need to go, it doesn't break down, it functions perfectly. I've spent a lifetime being upset with the way I look; that experience was key."
The battle cry: "My whole career, I've been on a level of self-esteem about whether I fit into a perfect size, dictated by the industry. That's one thing when you're 17, but when you get into your late 20s, your early 30s, your bodies change."
Models like Emme and celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith have shown that there is work after size 12, but isn't modeling for Mode and Lane Bryant the kiss of death for a model who did high fashion?
"I think most women at my caliber of work would rather be out of work than be a size 12 publicly," Otis said. " The fact remains that at a size 12, people are appalled and people are floored and that's what's insane. At a size 8 one editor - I won't mention names - called up my agent and told them I was too fat to run the pictures. And I've never been healthier or happier."
Born in San Francisco, her father was a corporate lawyer, her mother a fund-raiser. Both parents drank, as did Carre, from the time she was 8. By the sixth grade, she was taking alcohol with her to school. She ran away from home often, spending time in halfway houses. At 14, she dropped out of school and started to model and had the opportunity to meet Eileen Ford.
How was that?
One of those loaded looks and then one of those long "Mmmmms," which is the equivalent of bitter Sondheim songs.
"Eileen Ford? Mmmmmm. God, I got into trouble once with this quote, but she wasn't extremely nice," she said. "Now I can say it was just a business, but for a young girl it was crushing: She told me that the length between my knee and ankle was too short, my calves were too short. This could just have been what a young girl heard."
(No confirmation there from Ford. "I didn't even know that I'd seen her at 14. The only thing I remember is the name.")
Otis modeled in San Francisco, moved to Paris in her late teens, made the cover of French Elle right away. Weight was always a bit of a struggle. She went through a stage, as a teen-ager, of loving chocolate croissants and got a little chubby and learned chubby was not OK.
Otis has said that she was given as much as two grams of cocaine a day by modeling agents to keep her weight down, that she took diet pills. But a lot of her drug use, she'll admit, had nothing to do with weight. If you have an addictive personality, she said, if you are unsure of yourself, you'll try lots of things and she did.
Her career soared. In her late teens and early 20s, she was a top-level model, working for Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, doing covers for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue making $15,000 to $20,000. At 23, she was offered a contract with Helena Rubinstein. She turned it down, she says, because her husband, the actor and amateur boxer Mickey Rourke, did not want her to work.
There were a lot of terrible stories from the marriage, stories that made the tabloids, but talking about it, Otis, who has had lots of therapy in the last year, is very careful to Take Responsibility. Though sometimes she takes so much responsibility it sounds like she is Making Excuses.
"A lot of bad stuff has been said about Mickey; the assumption was made that he made me stop working. He didn't want me to work; I was ultimately the one who agreed not to work, no gun was held to my head."
In 1994, Rourke was charged with spousal battery in Los Angeles Municipal Court for allegedly slapping his wife, knocking her down, and kicking her at their publicist's office. Rourke pleaded not guilty. The charges were dropped when Otis later refused to prosecute.
Was there violence? "All I would say is there was a certain amount of aggression in our relationship," Otis said. Of her decision not to prosecute, she said, "This is an area I would like to stay away from."
She says her husband would sleep with other women, that he would bring them home and they would sometimes steal her clothes.
"How did I explain that to myself? I was just too ready to believe anything," Otis said. "It would go something like, 'Oh, maybe the hotel I stayed at mixed up my laundry and the maid put somebody else's underwear in with mine and when I packed I didn't notice it and that's why it's here.' "
Rourke declined to comment about the marriage.
The heroin was destructive to her body as well as to her mind - at one point she weighed 170 pounds. Rourke, despite their on-again, off-again relationship, took Otis to Mexico for a rapid withdrawal treatment with an experimental drug.
Then it was back in earnest to the old tricks of the modeling business: Get two weeks' notice that you have to do a job, try to knock off 5 to 15 pounds by a juice fast for a few days, followed by a little bit of protein, try to get herself down from 135 pounds.
Otis did the "hands tugging at the bikini bottom" shot for Bob Guccione Jr.'s Gear magazine in 1999 and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2000. How many calls did she get after doing S.I.?
"Not as many as you'd think," Ms. Otis said, evenly. "Let's face it, I'm in a business where at 31 you're considered over the hill."
Then came the Himalayas, last September.
"I came back from that trip with a lot of my priorities in check," Otis said. "I was really willing, if need be, not to work again if it meant compromising my health and my sanity."
Could she have been thinking that since she didn't get that many calls after Sports Illustrated, she might as well eat what she wanted?
No, Otis insists. It wasn't like she wanted an excuse to pig out on ice cream. She wanted to eat three meals a day, like a normal person. It brought her, with exercise, to 155 pounds.
The move is risky, admits Jeffrey Dash, the owner of the Dash Group, a management company in Los Angeles that represents Otis.
"We don't push her as a plus-size model," Dash said. "We say, 'You do know she's a 12?' A few go, 'Oh, really?' Most go, 'OK' The population is growing up, more and more designers are getting into this thing called plus size."
In New York, at Ford 12 Plus, agent Gary Dakin says that plus-size models are now making money that only supermodels used to make. He lists Otis, along with Kate Dillon and the Ford model Tami, as the three top models in the plus-size industry, even though Otis has just arrived in that size.
"Because of where she came from, the celebrity and notoriety while being a straight-size model, it positions her to come in at demanding rates," Dakin said.
There are other models, he added, who have gone from "straight" modeling to plus-size as their bodies have matured. He said he knows of none whose career had been at her level, but some are doing very well.
Can these models be booked at Vogue or Harper's Bazaar?
"It's baby steps, baby steps," Dakin said. He has booked size-12 models at Marie Claire, and the teen magazines, and Glamour and Self. The teen magazines included them in their group shots. That's a good thing - it "promotes acceptance"
***
Several years ago.....
Her eyes and lips stand out to me. I'd love to see her body now...I'm guessing it would be more to my taste than these pics.
http://www.damselsandmore.com/feet1/carreotis5.jpg
http://www.damselsandmore.com/feet1/carreotis03.jpg
Agreed. She is gorgeous and the plus size notation is foolish. Here's an article I just found that you might care to read. I could only find the one pic(which accompanied the article) of her as she appears now. Pics at the bottom from her previous modeling work.
***
Carrie Otis turns a corner: Modeling at size 12
http://www.azcentral.com/rep/gifs2/0815otis.jpg
Joyce Wadler
New York Times News Service
Aug. 14, 2001 13:16:28
NEW YORK - Carre Otis, one-time cover girl of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, has done a number of shocking things in her life. She says she has been addicted to heroin; turned down a $1 million deal with Helena Rubinstein because, she claims, Mickey Rourke, her husband at the time, did not wish her to work; attempted suicide thrice; and been one of the first models, or so she believes, to have tattoos, one of which, now removed, contained the name of her ex.
"My one advice with tattoos is never write names on your body," said Otis, for all of her history an upbeat California girl. "Never, never, never, never!"
But now Carre Otis has done something really over the top: Become a size 12. Gained 30 pounds in less than a year. Posed as a cover girl for the September issue of Mode, the magazine that describes itself as "the new shape of fashion," which is to say, women of generous size. She is working next week for Lane Bryant.
No matter that at 5 feet 10 inches and 155 pounds, Otis looks gorgeous, actually slender, or that the average American woman is a size 14. In the fashion world, she is a plus size. What made Otis, who is 32, do it?
A charitable trek through Katmandu, says Otis, in her Michael Kors suede pants and ankle strap shoes from Barney's and a Theory blouse opened halfway to her front. She belongs to this group, Medicine for Nepal, and last October they made a trip to orphanages to dispense medicine and food and clothing. Suddenly Otis - who has, as she puts it, literally been on a diet for 17 years; who in the last year had starved herself once again to make the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated - had an epiphany.
"I was in an orphanage in Katmandu, and there was an infant that was totally swathed in cloth; it was dying," she said. "There was absolutely nothing anyone could do. No medical attention, no doctor, no food. Mothers are crying, mothers can't feed their babies. And it's just like, Whoa! All of this time I've spent being unhappy with my precious human body and it gets me where I need to go, it doesn't break down, it functions perfectly. I've spent a lifetime being upset with the way I look; that experience was key."
The battle cry: "My whole career, I've been on a level of self-esteem about whether I fit into a perfect size, dictated by the industry. That's one thing when you're 17, but when you get into your late 20s, your early 30s, your bodies change."
Models like Emme and celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith have shown that there is work after size 12, but isn't modeling for Mode and Lane Bryant the kiss of death for a model who did high fashion?
"I think most women at my caliber of work would rather be out of work than be a size 12 publicly," Otis said. " The fact remains that at a size 12, people are appalled and people are floored and that's what's insane. At a size 8 one editor - I won't mention names - called up my agent and told them I was too fat to run the pictures. And I've never been healthier or happier."
Born in San Francisco, her father was a corporate lawyer, her mother a fund-raiser. Both parents drank, as did Carre, from the time she was 8. By the sixth grade, she was taking alcohol with her to school. She ran away from home often, spending time in halfway houses. At 14, she dropped out of school and started to model and had the opportunity to meet Eileen Ford.
How was that?
One of those loaded looks and then one of those long "Mmmmms," which is the equivalent of bitter Sondheim songs.
"Eileen Ford? Mmmmmm. God, I got into trouble once with this quote, but she wasn't extremely nice," she said. "Now I can say it was just a business, but for a young girl it was crushing: She told me that the length between my knee and ankle was too short, my calves were too short. This could just have been what a young girl heard."
(No confirmation there from Ford. "I didn't even know that I'd seen her at 14. The only thing I remember is the name.")
Otis modeled in San Francisco, moved to Paris in her late teens, made the cover of French Elle right away. Weight was always a bit of a struggle. She went through a stage, as a teen-ager, of loving chocolate croissants and got a little chubby and learned chubby was not OK.
Otis has said that she was given as much as two grams of cocaine a day by modeling agents to keep her weight down, that she took diet pills. But a lot of her drug use, she'll admit, had nothing to do with weight. If you have an addictive personality, she said, if you are unsure of yourself, you'll try lots of things and she did.
Her career soared. In her late teens and early 20s, she was a top-level model, working for Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, doing covers for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue making $15,000 to $20,000. At 23, she was offered a contract with Helena Rubinstein. She turned it down, she says, because her husband, the actor and amateur boxer Mickey Rourke, did not want her to work.
There were a lot of terrible stories from the marriage, stories that made the tabloids, but talking about it, Otis, who has had lots of therapy in the last year, is very careful to Take Responsibility. Though sometimes she takes so much responsibility it sounds like she is Making Excuses.
"A lot of bad stuff has been said about Mickey; the assumption was made that he made me stop working. He didn't want me to work; I was ultimately the one who agreed not to work, no gun was held to my head."
In 1994, Rourke was charged with spousal battery in Los Angeles Municipal Court for allegedly slapping his wife, knocking her down, and kicking her at their publicist's office. Rourke pleaded not guilty. The charges were dropped when Otis later refused to prosecute.
Was there violence? "All I would say is there was a certain amount of aggression in our relationship," Otis said. Of her decision not to prosecute, she said, "This is an area I would like to stay away from."
She says her husband would sleep with other women, that he would bring them home and they would sometimes steal her clothes.
"How did I explain that to myself? I was just too ready to believe anything," Otis said. "It would go something like, 'Oh, maybe the hotel I stayed at mixed up my laundry and the maid put somebody else's underwear in with mine and when I packed I didn't notice it and that's why it's here.' "
Rourke declined to comment about the marriage.
The heroin was destructive to her body as well as to her mind - at one point she weighed 170 pounds. Rourke, despite their on-again, off-again relationship, took Otis to Mexico for a rapid withdrawal treatment with an experimental drug.
Then it was back in earnest to the old tricks of the modeling business: Get two weeks' notice that you have to do a job, try to knock off 5 to 15 pounds by a juice fast for a few days, followed by a little bit of protein, try to get herself down from 135 pounds.
Otis did the "hands tugging at the bikini bottom" shot for Bob Guccione Jr.'s Gear magazine in 1999 and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2000. How many calls did she get after doing S.I.?
"Not as many as you'd think," Ms. Otis said, evenly. "Let's face it, I'm in a business where at 31 you're considered over the hill."
Then came the Himalayas, last September.
"I came back from that trip with a lot of my priorities in check," Otis said. "I was really willing, if need be, not to work again if it meant compromising my health and my sanity."
Could she have been thinking that since she didn't get that many calls after Sports Illustrated, she might as well eat what she wanted?
No, Otis insists. It wasn't like she wanted an excuse to pig out on ice cream. She wanted to eat three meals a day, like a normal person. It brought her, with exercise, to 155 pounds.
The move is risky, admits Jeffrey Dash, the owner of the Dash Group, a management company in Los Angeles that represents Otis.
"We don't push her as a plus-size model," Dash said. "We say, 'You do know she's a 12?' A few go, 'Oh, really?' Most go, 'OK' The population is growing up, more and more designers are getting into this thing called plus size."
In New York, at Ford 12 Plus, agent Gary Dakin says that plus-size models are now making money that only supermodels used to make. He lists Otis, along with Kate Dillon and the Ford model Tami, as the three top models in the plus-size industry, even though Otis has just arrived in that size.
"Because of where she came from, the celebrity and notoriety while being a straight-size model, it positions her to come in at demanding rates," Dakin said.
There are other models, he added, who have gone from "straight" modeling to plus-size as their bodies have matured. He said he knows of none whose career had been at her level, but some are doing very well.
Can these models be booked at Vogue or Harper's Bazaar?
"It's baby steps, baby steps," Dakin said. He has booked size-12 models at Marie Claire, and the teen magazines, and Glamour and Self. The teen magazines included them in their group shots. That's a good thing - it "promotes acceptance"
***
Several years ago.....
Her eyes and lips stand out to me. I'd love to see her body now...I'm guessing it would be more to my taste than these pics.
http://www.damselsandmore.com/feet1/carreotis5.jpg
http://www.damselsandmore.com/feet1/carreotis03.jpg
MorgaineLaFay
goodirishgirl
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2001
- Posts
- 18,521
Oh thank you! I have read that before too.. I love the pics...like that 2 one alot. 
Thanks
Thanks
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