Cara Delevingne Says Modeling Subjected Her ‘To…Not Great Stuff’

It wasn’t long ago that Cara Delevingne insisted that she wasn’t abandoning her modeling career completely in favor of acting, but it now seems Cara is doing just that, and according to Ms. Delevingne, she’s doing it with good reason. While Cara admits that the modeling profession left her feeling “hollow,” Ms. Delevingne says the stresses of modeling also affected her physically.

As anyone with a skin condition can attest, stress plays a major role in scaly, rash-like breakouts that can be as painful as they are humiliating and it was no different from Ms. Delevingne, who suffers from psoriasis.

“People would put on gloves and not want to touch me because they thought it was, like, leprosy or something,” Cara revealed.

Ms. Delevingne says that she was heavily stressed by the demands her modeling career placed upon her, so much so that Cara often considered abandoning it all.

“I was, like, fight and flight for months. Just constantly on edge.”

Cara says that she grew to hate her own body, simply for the constant criticism she received from others and the body shaming that goes on behind the scenes of the high fashion model industry.

“It is a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse.”

Ms. Delevingne fell into modeling at the age of 10, but Cara says that modeling “was never a dream” for her and that acting and making music was where her passions truly lay.

“It didn’t make me grow at all as a human being,” Ms. Delevingne said, as she spoke of moving on from her past in the modeling industry and focusing on acting. “And I kind of forgot how young I was. I felt so old.”

Cara Delevingne only briefly alluded to the darker side of the modeling industry, as she referred to being compelled to pose in sexually suggestive situations at very young ages. Cara also mentioned that she was photographed wearing revealing outfits and at times, wearing no clothes at all.

“I am a bit of a feminist and it makes me feel sick,” Delevingne said. “It’s horrible and it’s disgusting. You start when you are really young and you get subjected to … not great stuff.”

Cara Delevingne can be seen in Paper Towns, which is currently in theaters.

[Featured image: Cara Delevingne courtesy of Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images]