Anja Rubik Quotes

I think a lot of young girls go through that period in their life of finding who they are, and at that point, looking good matters the most.

Mothers don't let your daughters grow up to be models unless you're present.

Like virtually all of the women I know, I spent my teenage years battling with my body and feeling I wasn't good enough. A lot of that negativity is because I was pursuing a career in modeling and was told countless times that my body was too big. My hips and thighs were too wide.

I remember being 12 or 13 and reading 'Seventeen' and 'CosmoGirl.' They were all about self-improvement.

I wouldn't want [my daughtr] to be a model. I don't think it's the best industry really for young girls. Unless you're really strong, it can really f**k you up.

I was always a little bit chubbier than everyone else. But I would feel pain for some of the other girls, who were so young and felt they had to be so skinny. They'd be living in the model apartments, totally wrapped up in this whole world. And it made me more sad than anything.

I've always hated modeling. It's superficial and fake, and I hate to have to care about what I look like. I get a pimple and freak. The whole business is all about selling beautiful girls' faces and bodies, so how can there be anything intelligent or nice about that except for the girl who makes money?

The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.

My dad wouldn't let me date until I was 16.

I'm not worried about wrinkles on my cheeks, or going grey. I'm not trying to be 20.

I think Jennifer Lawrence is a brilliant role model for young girls, not some of the models that I see on the runway.

I remember being told by my very first photographer that if I lost weight, and I was a skinny model, it would do wonders for my career. My mum got really defensive - 'I don't think we will be doing that, thank you so much, goodbye.'

In high school, I started saving up to get a nose job, which is so ridiculous. I had this job at Tim Hortons, and I was trying to save up $10,000 for a nose job.

There was a solid six-month period where I was going out on castings and I was laughed out of the room because I'm much more petite than other models.

My size wasn't something that I'd ever spent a huge amount of time thinking about - I guess at the age of 17 or 18 you don't.

That always stuck with me. When I finished school in 2015, I started going to open calls in New York. But I was getting the same response every time: 'Get your measurements down. Take X inches off your thighs and hips.'

I just want to send the best message possible to women. And I'm just so thankful because I honestly never thought I could model. I've always been told I wasn't tall enough, I wasn't thin enough.

I began working as a model because I was born thin. I didn't become thin to be a model.

Being a model, you're constantly judged on the way you look, but I think you have to be really strong and confident in knowing who you are and not take anything personally, you know, because not everybody can like you, and not everybody will think you're beautiful.

Every agency would mention my hips. I remember looking at the other models and thinking, 'I do not look like these girls.'

Growing up, there was a lot of pressure for women to be good-looking, but my mum was very strict, and she didn't allow me to wear make-up. Looking back, it was good for me. It slowed me down from becoming an adult too quickly.

I am shocked as to how much importance my weight garners in the world we live in. I don't know why it is so important, to be honest.

I'm certainly not a supermodel.

Back in Nebraska, I was known as the fat model - the girl who was pretty for a big girl. My body, like my confidence, has been picked apart, manipulated, and controlled by others who didn't necessarily understand it.

Once I realized, when I became a plus-size model, that there were more women like me, my confidence immediately shot through the roof.