eating disorders

• Karoline Bjørnelykke started modeling when she was a size zero. She’s now considered plus-size.

• She said the industry encourages dieting; she now makes TikToks sharing her eating disorder journey.

• This is Karoline’s story, as told to Charissa Cheong.

• Editor’s note: This story discusses eating disorders and may be triggering for some readers.

Editor’s note: This story discusses eating disorders and may be triggering for some readers.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with model Karoline Bjørnelykke. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was never the cool kid in school, so when I got scouted to become a model at 15, I was really quite surprised.

I worked in high fashion throughout my teenage years, walking the runway at Paris Fashion Week in 2012, and moving from my home in Norway to model abroad. It was weird because I went from feeling like no one wanted to talk to me to getting invited to lots of events where everyone wanted to be my friend.

Things took a bad turn pretty quickly. While I was away from home, I was living on an extreme diet to maintain my figure. I have struggled with anorexia since the age of 12 because even though I wasn’t overweight, I was naturally a bit bigger than other kids in terms of height and build, so I got bullied by my peers.  The extreme dieting during my early years as a model made my eating disorder a lot worse.

I came back to Norway five years ago and started to focus on