14 DAY TRIAL // In 2009, Kylie Bisutti (nee Ludlow) got the chance of a lifetime – and every model’s biggest wish come true – when she was hired by Victoria’s Secret as one of their Angels. A while later, she quit her job and dropped out of every other modeling commitment, because they clashed with her religious beliefs.
She’s written a book, “I'm No Angel: From Victoria's Secret Model to Role Model,” which will be out in mid-May, in which she explains the reasons for her decision to throw away millions because her faith in God told her it was the right thing to do.
Kylie was very much in demand at the time she left the fashion industry but, she explains in a new interview with the New York Post, she simply couldn’t stand being treated like a piece of meat.
She’d dreamed of being a model ever since she was a teen but she never imagined the actual job would turn out to be so demeaning.
“I thought the models I saw defined beauty, and beauty meant you were important,” she says.
She moved to NYC to pursue a career in modeling and, in a short while, she became acquainted with the unglamorous side of the industry.
“One of my [model] roommates was so bulimic, she would involuntarily throw up when she ate. She would go to sleep crying every night and just look at herself in the mirror thinking that she was so fat. And she was so thin,” she says.
After she became more religious and met and fell in love with her current husband, Kylie says she was specifically barred from talking about her relationship because he wasn’t famous and that would have been bad for the VS brand.
However, it wasn’t until she did a shoot for FHM that she realized the full extent of the debasement she was being subjected to.
“I was being paid to strip down and pose provocatively to titillate men. It wasn't about modeling clothes anymore; I felt like a piece of meat,” she says.
She went back home from the shoot and prayed to God. The next day, she knew she had to get out.
“I realized my career was sending a bad message to women about confidence and body image,” the former Angel says.
Today, the most exciting thing in Kylie’s life is that she canned many jars of fresh pasta sauce with her husband – and she vouches she wouldn’t have it any other way.