For devotees of the 1990s brand of supermodel, the name Carré Otis conjures up wonderful memories not only of her modelling prowess but also of a woman who got very serious with the self-destructive Mickey Rourke before he developed his own (presumed) plastic-surgery addiction (as photographed above in 1990’s Wild Orchid).
Sadly, our agencies don’t have any more recent photos of Carré after 2005, but she does appear in an interview in the September issue of Vogue Australia (the one with Victoria Beckham on the cover). Carré is now 44 years old and seeks to come clean after decades of starvation and lying in response to fanmail in regard to her dietary and fitness habits. The results are rather heartbreaking:
On her workout lies: Ms Otis confesses she used to tell people she did “Jazzercise three times a week and light weights,” but that “the heavily guarded truth” was that she exercised “a minimum of two hours a day, seven days a week.”
She lied to her fans: She tells a fan who said she’d “die to look like [her]” that she had developed three holes in her heart, which she attributes to “a culmination of 20 years of starvation. In your letter you said you’d die to look like me. Well that’s almost what I did.”
Being sexy was an act: “As you can see, insecurity and the endless desire to look perfect were the only consistent things in my life. Right beneath the surface I was … scared and very, very sad.” She compares her feigned confidence in front of the camera with how she used to “fake sexual satisfaction” with her then-boyfriend. “I sure fooled him, and you.”
She starved herself into hair loss: “Insecurity and the endless desire to look perfect were the only consistent things in my life.” At runway shows and photo shoots, hairstyles often gave her hair extensions and wigs to create that “shiny and full” look, she says.
Does she feel bad about lying? “I can’t go back in time to answer those young girls. But] I hope to provide some insight by answering them now.”
[From Vogue Australia]
Ahh, workout lies. You wanna know my very favorite from contemporary supermodels? The “I don’t stick to a routine but mix it up with lots of stuff” as in “mountain climbing and paddleboarding and sometimes volleyball!” variety just “to avoid getting bored.” Bitches, please. Anyone who stays in serious shape knows that the routine gets boring at times, but that’s just part of the challenge. If it was easy, everyone would be “in shape,” so I just wish that models could be candid enough to admit that they work their asses off to keep their very lucrative professions intact.
Here’s Carre in 2002 at the 1st Annual Runway for Life benefit. Girlfriend was and is gorgeous, and I hope she eventually achieves some peace.
Photos courtesy of WENN
Wow. How sad. They’re like doping athletes: risking longevity and health for fame and success.
It sounds trite, but you can find far more fulfilment in creating a happy family or a quiet creative outlet.
Was it Adriana Lima who revealed her ridiculous VS runway show routine involving protein shakes and starvation and then backtracked when everyone pointed out how extreme it was?
Yeah – you have to do that, so this doesn’t surprise me. I’m naturally an athletic build, run for 1-1½ hours three times and week and fit in 2 gym sessions whilst eating healthily and I still look a long way from these women! You HAVE to be obsessive to fit the mould.
The Victoria’s Secret girls always look bright eyed and clear skinned and their hair is always shiny. I always wonder how they do it while starving and malnourished. It’s always perplexed me.
I want to know, too!! I want to know how women like Angelina Jolie and Kate Bosworth are skin and bones and have that pale, pasty skin that comes from lack of nutrition, but have beautiful, plump faces. There’s a secret, I know there is. Injections?
Maureen
I think some women just place fat in different areas. A college roommate gained no weight in her legs. None. So we she gained a lot of weight it just expanded out of her waist over her hips. Her legs were long, and lean, and strong looking . Some women are just like that. If it was easy to be that very specific image they wouldn’t be paid so much. Since it’s all an image being sold to us we won’t know what tricks they pull to keep themselves that way.
By being young!!!
“At runway shows and photo shoots, hairstyles often gave her hair extensions and wigs to create that “shiny and full” look, she says.”
I think it hasn’t changed that much.
Makeup & Airbrushing
Re the Kate Bosworth comment – she looks awful up close. I’ve met her and her face was so stretched I could see underneath the skin. It was actually quite disturbing.
yeah, i never understood the hate to her comments. she’s honest and she was being honest. don’t we want to know? i guess the answer is no. we rather them lie and we snark.
Truth be told guys, there is without a doubt, a genetic factor. I’m 40 with a 3 year old and have ecerienced weight fluctuations but never outgrown a size2. Ive always been an avid runner and health in mind eater. i cant begin to remember the countless times ive been thin bashed or rumored to have an eating disorder, These women, not all, are Born this way…like it or not.
Yes it was Adriana Lima, and VS was pissed. They want her to project the image of health while having the body of someone who doesnt eat much and works out a ton. It bugged me that people gave her so much flak, since I’d way rather she was honest about wha she has to do to get that VS show body, than lie and pretend that an almost unattainable standard is easy or healthy.
Meh. Common practice for fitness models and competitive body builders. It’s called a ‘cut’. You drop a lot of water weight right before an event. It leans you out and gives you more muscle definition and is completely safe.
Of course I can’t say what else she or the other models are doing as far as maintaining their low weights the rest of the time.
The 2 hours per day doesn’t strike me too much, if you’re eating healthy your body is not affected: my boyfriend used to do that (he was a bike fanatic at the time) and he is fine.
What is sad is the holes thing in the heart, I’ve always suspected models lie about their diets habit.
Agree. It’s the combination of zero food and probably smoking and taking pills that makes the “two hours” so destructive.
And the models we have now are even thinner than the ’90s supermodels…
+1
I remember reading she also had a raging cocaine habit…so that may have something to do with her heart.
These weren’t the full quotes. She talks about lying about eating chicken, spinach and oatmeal and was really living off cigarettes and so much coffee that she had to take sleeping pills.
she is gorgeous. thank you carrie for being honest today
amen
If someone dropped in from another planet, think how insane it would seem to them that we pay people to be “models” of beauty and perfection, the standards of which we set at a place that can only be achieved through starvation. Then as women, many of us spend our lives either starving, working to accept our less than pin thin selves or hating ourselves for not achieving that standard. How crazy is that?
And don’t you love the fashion industry’s “excuse” for why models have to be so thin: “So they can fit into the run-way clothes”. Lord, it’s all so irrational.
Cue everyone going SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST NATURALLY SKINNY. This is true but I know very few naturally thin women who are almost 6 ft tall and a size 0. And oh I just hike and eat whatever I want! Lies.
You can’t be 6ft tall and a size 0. That is impossible because the length of clothes would be too short. They would be size 2-4. I am a runway model myself 5’9 and not even I can fit 0. My agency lists my size as 4 and no one complains. No one 6ft is a size 0.
“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” Kate Moss
Kate Moss is actually not the first person to say that, I believe it was Coco Chanel.
I’m not really familiar with her, but judging from these pictures it looks like her natural tendency is to carry a little more weight. “Big boned” is the generic term. It’s like asking Beyoncé to have Miranda Kerr’s body. You would have to abuse yourself to unnatural degrees. Whereas for Miranda it’s more natural to be so tiny. She still abuses herself I’m sure, but not to the same extent. I think it’s easier for some models to be super thin than others, just like it’s easier for some regular people.
Big-boned? Take a look at her ankles. They’re tiny!
I always liked her. She went through a lot of pain and I hope she can get to a better place.
Side note: I can’t tell you how hot Mickey Rourke was in Wild Orchid. He was a top 5 for me all throughout my teens. I hate what he did to himself! What a beautiful man. Just age gracefully people!!
Now the outside matches the inside. Mickey Roarke is apparently a spectacularly awful guy.
Mickey Rourke is (was?) an A-Hole, but he was helluva hot back in the days.
Mickey Rourke didn’t go to plastic surgery to improve his looks in the standard way that everyone thinks he did.
He hated being an actor, thought it wasn’t manly enough profession. He quit Hollywood for about 5yrs during which time he tried to be a professional boxer. I can’t remember how well he fared overall, but in the end he turned out to be a mediocre boxer who was never going to set the world alight.
In the meantime his good looks had been destroyed.
So he went to plastic surgery to try to restore his former face, but he used a philistine of a surgeon who made it worse.
I remember the stories out of Hollywood about how there wasn’t much that could be done to restore his face.
Most of his surgeries are to fix the damage from the boxing as well the horrid surgeon’s work.
It’s not to be perceived younger as most assume it is.
To me being honest may not be the best thing for young girl. If you are so inclined to develop an ED hearing the regimen is like getting secret tips…then again with the pro ana and mia websites its all a click away sadly.
I’m sorry she had to go through all that and I’m sure a lot of models must doing it too. But not all of them.
I weight less than 109 pounds, even if I deal with an invisible chronic illness, the medications and the insane amount of food I eat help me stay between 109-119 pounds. Otherwise, I’d be 109 and under. My father has weighted 175 pounds since he has 25. He is 6’3 and 52 now.
Some people are born skinny and remain that way. If there was a magic formula, all Hollywood would do it.
That being said, I do know that some models are currently practicing unhealthy eating habits and doing other extreme stuff to remain skinny.
Yes, Eleonor – many of the models of the 80s/90s were quite healthy, and the ad campaigns (which live foreover on sites like the fashion spot and bellazon, demonstrate it); Carrie will have a special place for me as she was included in one of the best ad campaigns periods: Revlon’s Unforgettable Faces campaign that ran from 1987-1991.
They don’t do campaigns like that anymore because the models, creativity, and photographers that did that campaign are gone.
She’s been fairly open about her issues with food and drugs, etc. I’ve seen her on more than one TV interview discussing this stuff. It’s all really sad, IMO.
As another commenter pointed out, working out two hours a day isn’t necessarily unhealthy. However, it is important to rest at least one day a week and to eat properly. She wasn’t doing either one.
I wish her peace and happiness!
Two hours really isn’t that bad for anyone, especially for a model. As long as you’re eating like a normal healthy person, two hours of cardio and weights is healthy. I’m actually surprised she is only admitting to two hours per day. I’m willing to bet that many celebrities exercise more than that. I remember reading several celebrities mentioned on Celebitchy who admitted to exercising all day. Kate Hudson admitted to exercising 6 hours a day and Ireland Baldwin recently said she exercises twice a day in the morning and night. Exercising morning and night seems okay as long as she is taking in enough calories, but 6 hours a day is just crazy.
Many celebrities still lie about their diet and exercise regimen. One celeb that comes to mind is Kate Winslet. We all know that Winslet is naturally curvy and used to be obese before she became a big name in Hollywood. She has said that she doesn’t take exercising seriously and uses Pilates DVDs to stay in shape. Give me a break. Someone with her body type has to be strict about their dieting and exercise. She likely has a strict diet and does some serious exercising with a personal trainer more than 3 times each week.
What makes these models really thin and unhealthy is the starvation more than the exercise. A combination of starvation and exercise is what gives these women the results that most normal and healthy women envy because these bodies are unattainable for the most part without some form of extreme dieting.
When I was a lot younger I was obsessed with all of the models of the time and being thin. I would exercise too much, live off of Diet Coke, pretzels and cigs, and was rewarded with “perfect” thinness and utter misery. Thank God I grew out of that. Now that I’m older I don’t know why anyone would ever want to be a model. In most instances models don’t eat, they abuse drugs, over exercise, and are constantly criticized by agencies, photographers, and designers about their looks and weight. Sounds like a miserable existence. There are a few exceptions that come to mind, but I think a lot of them live like this.
She was/is such a stunning woman.
There are a certain amount of naturally skinny people and then there’s the rest of the world. Thank you Carrie for being honest. Being in the business she was in it was her job to be that thin and she did things that weren’t healthy to do it. And yes, I completely understand her not being truthful when asked because that would have been a PR disaster.
I have a lot of wonderful girlfriends and you know I only have 1-ONE-who was able to maintain that thinness after kids and into her 40s without doing much because that is actually her genetic makeup. Everyone else has to work at it. Whether it’s diet/exercise/managing medical issues, the weight creeps up and it needs to be managed.This is why I stopped believing what I read in magazines about people’s beauty/diet regimes many many many years ago because it’s false. They lie, because they have to. If we really knew what they did it would make us sad and break our hearts.
If you tell me you’re that thin and you don’t exercise-bullshit
If you tell me you’re skin in naturally that luminous, you just get up, splash water on your face and go, and you’re 400 years old – bullshit
If you tell me that you just run your fingers through your hair before you leave the house and it just looks that good-bullshit
If you tell me that your nails just grow that way – bullshit
You want to know say I think it’s bullshit? Because I see you at the gym, spa, plastic surgeon, dermatologist, and actively avoiding food at every wedding, dinner & birthday party to look the way you do. I don’t judge, because I do it too….just don’t lie to me.
It’s not the exercising 2 hours a day that’s inherently bad, it’s the mandatory starvation diet that goes along with it that’s sad.
Hey, my nails do grow that way!
You know what I’m gonna say. 🙂 And by the way, so did mine, until I started doing cleaning and laundry for my elderly mother, so now I also have to wear gloves, take care of my cuticles and use the good hand creams for them to continue to look good. And when other women ask me what I do, I tell them and give them the products I use as well.
Ha. The nails thing is funny. I’ve been chronically sick and anaemic for years due to a hormone imbalance. My hair went to crap during this time but my fingernails just won’t stop growing! And I’m someone who likes to keep their nails as short as possible. Weird.
I have a really amazing head of hair- my crowning glory- it’s honey blonde and shiny and beachy. I wear it in a bun to the gym, it gets all sweaty, I take it down and everyone says how beautiful it is. And I honestly do nothing.
I have to watch my weight; I have slowly lost 40 pounds over the past 18 months giving up sugar and working out.
Slimness doesn’t come easy to me- I have a fullness, a fleshiness, lots of female hormone.
But hair that i do nothing to but gets complimented every single day? That comes super easy!
We all have things that are challenges (saving money, trusting people, exercising- whatever!) and things that come easier to us than other people
(social skills, learning, public speaking etc).
People outside the norm do exist and no, they’re not perfect in everyday but let them have their super-flat-I’ve-had-4-kids-and-don’t-even-do-pilates-stomaches, their abilities to cook or paint or invest ridiculously well, their super sexy bed hair!
Leave them alone and stop being jealous!!!!
Camilia, I’m sure you use shampoo/conditioner so that it stays in great condition right? So, when you let it down at the gym it looks good. That’s doing something..:-)That’s happened to me too and I give them the name of my hair dresser & the products I used when I combed my hair that day before I went to the gym. It doesn’t have to be big and complicated, but you still did something to yourself…you didn’t just roll out of bed like that.
My skills as a musician make me a pro, I don’t have to work that hard at it, but I do practice a lot, and have had lessons. Just because it comes easily doesn’t mean I don’t do anything to maintain the skills. I do and I tell people so. Not jealous just realistic and honest.
You can develop holes in your heart from starvation?! Fuck. That makes sense, with muscle wasting, but I was born with two holes that I had patched… I didn’t think they were something you could ‘get.’ Wow.
“I hope she eventually achieves some peace”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
not with those sex scenes from ‘Wild Orchid’ still floating around. uggh. smh 🙄
“Model” is such a bullshit job.
This kinda thing was puzzling me for ages. Before I started losing weight, I assumed (wrongly) that ‘starving’ was just part of weight loss. When I actually educated myself, I realized that ‘suitable calorie deficit’ and starving are not the same things (duh!). I’ve been losing weight slowly for a year now, and starving has not been a part of it at all.
So, I was really at a loss to explain why these people were ‘starving’ themselves. Like…say for some unknown reason I’m required to be 110 lbs. At my height and age, with 2 hours of exercise a day, my maintenance calories for that weight are around 2200. Say I want to get down to 100 lbs. .. I just eat 1600 or so calories. It’s less, but it’s not starving.
But then I was watching Portia de Rossi’s interview with Ellen, about her ED. It’s all about time – that’s where it get’s fucked up.
Me, I have no job-related requirements to drop weight in any given time. So, if I wanted to get to 100 lbs, I can just eat 1600 calories until I get there. My maintenance calories at that weight, with the 2 hours of exercise, would be around 2100 a day.
But from what Portia was saying, you end up in a crazy starve/re-feed kinda cycle. You have a week to drop X amount of lbs, you starve. After the job, you stuff yourself because you’re hungry. You put the weight back on and then some because that’s what happens. Then, you get another job, you starve again. And so on and so on.
I mean, it’s not as simple as that… Some people can maintain a low bodyfat percentage easier than others. But I’m guessing that models etc… aren’t required to care about bodyfat and lean body mass.
I’m not really sure what my point is… apart from the fact that I do unrealistically wish people would be more honest about what they do to maintain the bodies they have. They’re not going to though, because they need to maintain an aura of ‘magical beauty gifted from the Gods for them alone’.
Obviously, this doesn’t excuse why people would need to have such low body weights anyway… And it always seems to be that even if they were naturally slender – that means nothing, they still have to lose weight! It’s like…congratulations! You’re tall and naturally slender and have the face of a model! Now you just have to lose 10 lbs, instead of the normal 20 lbs we usually ask for. Well done!
Yeah, I’ll never understand why people lie about this. I mean, working out two hours a day is a lot of time working out, and more than the average person would have time for seven days a week. But if I was the person dying to have her body, and learned that that is what she did to maintain it, I would either be like “okay, better up my workouts” or I’d be like “sh-t, man, it is NOT worth that to me!” Either is preferable to leading other people to feel like their is something wrong with them because Jazzercise 3 days a weeks isn’t working. And it only makes her look more disciplined!
You have a good point. I’ve watched people do this over the years and it seems that some people feel that if they admit to working hard at something, or using specific products to look good that it means that they are “struggling” and not as good as someone else who is “naturally beautiful, thin, talented etc”. I think if we stepped away from that attitude, people would relax a little.
When I see women who are at the gym everyday, I also see their results. They seem to eat well (I don’t know them all that well though) and look healthy and I’m happy for them. It encourages me to keep on making life choices that are balanced and healthy. I see nothing wrong with it.
This isn’t quite related, but I remember watching or reading something about rappers and about how hard they actually worked to get where they were. And how often, wanna-be rappers didn’t understand that. It’s no real surprise either, seeing as they tend not to talk about that side of things (or, if they do, it’s not really ‘heard’). You know…that they sat down every evening and wrote and practiced and practiced and practiced and failed then tried again.
People in the media don’t talk about that side of it, the 80% of their life that’s lived in hard work. Or if they do, it doesn’t make for interesting headlines. People only consume the 20% – the output of what they do.
And idiot Gwyneth wants us to follow what Carre used to and she now does. Love Carre, bless her and please hope she undoes some of all the damage Gwyneth is doing out there.