Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves by Crystal Renn

Jan 05, 2011 Christina rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, memoirs

Crystal Renn's story is very interesting. And extremely important for people - especially young girls - to hear. (The moral of Renn's story: Be yourself, be comfortable in your own skin, and good things will happen to you.)

But this book was definitely not the best way it could be told.

It's poorly written, and just as poorly edited.

There are name errors; the popular girl at Clinton Junior High goes from being Madysson Middleton to Madysson Morgan. The chronology is unclear in many places and conf...more

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Christina Jess wrote: "And people wonder why young women struggle with eating disorders...people like you think they know everything about obesity (something yo...more
Oct 04, 2012 08:31pm

Jess Christina wrote: "Jess wrote: "And people wonder why young women struggle with eating disorders...people like you think they know everything about obe...more
Oct 05, 2012 09:05am

Jul 25, 2012 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is written by Ms. Renn, America's top plus-size model, and chronicles her early start in modeling, battle with anorexia and exercise addiction, and her road to recovery and accepting and loving her body for what it is and her subsequent rise to a leading plus-size model.

It's a quick read, a little over 200 pages, and despite Ms. Renn only being in her early 20's it does offer a nice biographical history of her. I really like the message the book conveys: be happy with who you are, eat healt...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Angela Risner rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't think that I will ever be able to do this book enough justice, but I will try.

To be honest, I haven't followed the modeling world for some time. I used to read all of the magazines and watched Style with Elsa Klensch religiously.

But years have passed since that time, and I had never heard of model Crystal Renn. I was unaware of her story.

Crystal was raised by her grandmother when her own mother abandoned her. Being abandoned or rejected by a parent often leads to feelings of inadequacy,...more

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May 29, 2012 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel like when reviewing this book it should be noted that Crystal Renn no longer qualifies at plus size. Over the past few years she has lost a substanial amount of weight and has gone from a size 12 to something closer to a size 8.

At the same time, however, I also feel like that piece of information doesn't take away from the message in her book "Hungry" and is, perhaps, unimportant. Regardless of her weight/size now, at the time of this book she was the top Plus Size model, having graced t...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another one of my Border's bargains that I'm very lucky to have picked up in the dollar bin. I had never really heard of Crystal Renn but had seen her national breast cancer awareness campaign, and the pictures and explination on the front cover really sold me. This is a true example of you don't always get what you see. Ms. Renn is an extremely intelligent woman as well as a talented model and gifted writer (although I'm not sure how much is truly hers since she had help with a ghost writer). S...more

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Dec 19, 2010 Aubrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just finished reading a biography/social commentary written by supermodel Crystal Renn, a.k.a. the most famous plus-sized model in the fashion world right now. As someone who has often struggled with personal body image and self-loathing, it was a poignant book for me to read. To read how Crystal starved and exercised herself to skeletal results, and later embraced health and happiness by accepting her body was an eye-opener. While her story skipped around and seemed like a jumbled autobiograp...more I just finished reading a biography/social commentary written by supermodel Crystal Renn, a.k.a. the most famous plus-sized model in the fashion world right now. As someone who has often struggled with personal body image and self-loathing, it was a poignant book for me to read. To read how Crystal starved and exercised herself to skeletal results, and later embraced health and happiness by accepting her body was an eye-opener. While her story skipped around and seemed like a jumbled autobiography and disordered eating commentary rolled into one, there were a lot of moments during my reading that I thought, “Why do I treat myself the way I do?”

For years, I was a competitive long distance runner. I could eat anything I wanted to. I was running so much mileage and burning so many calories, a plate full of spaghetti or an extra helping of dessert never bothered me. I hovered around 100 lbs. when I started high school, peaking at 115 lbs. when I showed up at West Point, after a 4-inch growth spurt over the previous couple of years. As a runner, all my friends were stick figures. Pretty stick figures that I wanted to emulate. But I never had a problem with my weight, I was happy with how I looked, and I never felt fat.

In college, the Freshman Fifteen arrived, and stuck around. I was suddenly miserable; my metabolism had finally caught up to me. I had curves I'd never had before, natural curves that I could have seen as feminine and beautiful, but I refused to embrace them. By the time I quit running (my junior year), graduated, and got married, I'd put on another fifteen pounds. (Been doing the math? We're up to 145 now.)

My wedding dress was a problem. I'd bought it after graduation, but gained weight during Jon's deployment to Iraq. I left the dress in Indiana, refusing to try it on again, in denial of the added pounds. A month before the wedding, my mother insisted that I try on the dress, and I did, though I could barely breathe in it. When she expressed concern, I shrugged it off, chalking it up to being bloated and saying I had a month to get slimmed down. The weight loss never happened.

Two days before my wedding, my mother again made me try on the dress again. As we struggled to zip it closed, she said, “I thought you were going to take care of this, Aubrey.” I lost it. I couldn't breathe in the dress that I was supposed to wear on the happiest day of my life. Bursting into tears, I left the dress in a pile on the floor.

Mom has always been conscious of my weight, but not in any way that is intentionally cruel. She does not want me to be unhealthy, and she wants me to be confident and happy with the way I look. That day, however, I felt I had failed her, and everyone else who was arriving for my wedding day.

The hero of that day was my father. Dad has struggled with his weight for years, and seeing his daughter so distraught sent him into action. He started calling any tailor in town who could alter wedding dresses, and one of them said they could fix my dress that same day, with an extra fee for express alterations, of course. Wiping my eyes, I gathered my dress and went to the seamstress, Margaret at The Tailored Fit, with Mom. Thankfully, the dress I had picked was not ornate, lacking lace and beading that would make any alterations difficult. Margaret was so kind, seeing how upset I was, and I left my dress in her hands. A few hours later, it was ready. In the end, the grand total of “letting out” needed? Less than an inch. All of the grief, tears, heartache, and misery were for LESS THAN AN INCH of fabric. In my head, I was imagining yards of fabric bridging the gap to cover my fatness. After all the trouble, the dress didn't look any different, I had a beautiful wedding day, and I couldn't have been more pleased with how everything went.

My wedding dress aside, I deployed to Iraq in December weighing more than I ever had before. I didn't want to exercise. I ate anything put in front of me. I always found a way to justify it, knowing I would be “deprived” living on military rations in a Third World, wartorn country. The first time I had to buy a dress or jeans in the double-digit sizes, I almost cried. How had I let it get this far? Was I FAT? To me, "ballooning" to a size 8 had been distressing enough. Double-digits made me think I was plus-size.

Crystal Renn fluctuates between a size 10 and 12, and is considered to be a plus-size model, despite being the same size as most "normal" women. Always a compulsive and perfectionistic person, she was a textbook case for anorexia. Now, she realizes so much of it was about control. Body dysmorphia and the pressure to be a stick-thin model took over her life, and she literally starving. Renn does not believe we should all be overweight; she wants us to be healthy and have a more realistic perception of what healthy and beautiful look like. Some people are meant to be skinny, others find their equilibrium at a higher weight. She quotes Linda Bacon, a nutritionist: “Don't change your body to fit your mind's perception of what it should look like. Change your mind to appreciate your real body.”

Through exercise and paying closer attention to what I eat (I won't call it a diet, I just cut out 5000-calorie binges), I have lost 10-15 lbs. this deployment, over seven months. To be honest, despite what the scales are telling me, I can't tell that I've lost weight. My body image is that messed up; I still see a tummy with love handles, thighs that won't get thinner. But the numbers don't lie like my imagination does, and that's what I have to keep telling myself.

For anyone who has ever struggled with weight, body dysmorphia, or even considered disordered eating behavior, this book is worth a look. It definitely gave me a reality check.(less)

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Dec 16, 2010 WORN Fashion Journal added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fashion-biographies

I must admit, I’ve never been one to keep up with models. I adore Heidi Klum for her often ridiculous critiques on Project Runway, but otherwise no one model has won me over as a big fan. However, I have recently become enamored with Crystal Renn. Not only do I find her beautiful, her lack of sexy-face brings something new and interesting to the table. Of course, she is known for more than just her expressive photographs; Renn is a size 12 and the leading “plus-size” model working in the industr...more I must admit, I’ve never been one to keep up with models. I adore Heidi Klum for her often ridiculous critiques on Project Runway, but otherwise no one model has won me over as a big fan. However, I have recently become enamored with Crystal Renn. Not only do I find her beautiful, her lack of sexy-face brings something new and interesting to the table. Of course, she is known for more than just her expressive photographs; Renn is a size 12 and the leading “plus-size” model working in the industry right now.

At 23, Cystal Renn has been working as a model for seven years, a career she documents in her memoir Hungry (penned with Marjorie Ingall, a former Sassy contributor). Reviews of the book, or articles about Crystal Renn, all seem to provide the same synopsis of her life. She was discovered at a charm school in Mississippi by a modeling scout who told her she could be a supermodel if she lost nearly ten inches off her hips. To achieve this goal, she began dieting heavily and developed an eating disorder, bringing her weight down to less than 100 pounds. She realized the scope of her illness and was able to recover and has now become a very successful plus-size model that works in mainstream fashion magazines like Vogue. And of course, that is all true, but in this book she engages critically with her past, the industry, and her continuing career as a model in a way that is sold short by a sound bite summary. Her recollections of filling her mouth with peanut butter only to wash it out, crying, are enough to make me hungry. While she writes a personal memoir, Renn’s accounts of sitting starving and miserable in her crappy New York model’s apartment bring into focus a larger reality that exists behind the glossy pages.

The chapters that follow the Renn’s life are staggered, with chapters dissecting body image and the inner workings of the fashion industry. Size and beauty are concepts that are intrinsically linked in our society, and Hungry provides more analysis than I expected. One point that Renn focuses on is how the issue of extreme thinness in the fashion world is consistantly made out to be someone else’s problem. Magazines claim to show women who are thin because designers send them sample sizes, but of course designers say they are making clothing for thin women because the magazines define this size as what is in style. And when blaming each other doesn’t work, it seems that the industry blames the models themselves. The book also discusses how the “waif look” (read: skeletal) seems to be tied to xenophobia. While of course there are waifs of many colours, Renn notes how the seasons that are populated by extremely thin woman on the runway (a recent trend) are overwhelmingly white. She believes this is tied to people’s belief that thinness connotes higher class; marginalized populations (which include millions of people of colour) have higher obesity rates, so therefore whiteness and thinness can be read as signifiers of luxury. And what is luxury if it doesn’t exclude 99.9% of us? Or employ a migrant work force of teenage girls?

Renn comes off as a likable, introspective person. I can definitely see how this book will appeal to WORN readers; she poses some serious questions about how we view our bodies through the lens of fashion, but she still takes time to gush about working with Jean Paul Gautier and Steven Meisel. Her life story is no doubt similar to other young models, but because she has become so successful she has the opportunity to speak out. And luckily for us, she is ready and willing to intelligently examine the fashion industry, while still enjoying the widespread acceptance she has received by it. (reviewed by Hillary Predko)
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Nov 04, 2010 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, women-s-studies

Full confession: I have a huge girl crush on Crystal. I think she is absolutely gorgeous, wish I looked like her every time I see her picture AND I love, love, love that her NORMAL size body has graced the covers of so many magazines (Vogue, Elle, etc).

What I didn't know before reading the book was that she struggled with intense anorexia as she tried to lose enough weight to become and remain a "straight size" model. At 5'9, she was 95 pounds at one point. Eventually, having had enough with st...more

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Sep 19, 2010 Summer Lewis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: body

A quick, easy read that is also inspiring and refreshing. Renn writes in a down-to-earth manner that feels very personal.

Some quotes from the book that spoke to me:
All people are entitled to natural, healthy food that tastes good. It’s a sin that organic, local food isn’t available to everyone at every income level. I wish everyone could eat closer to the land, not because of concerns about weight or even health but because we’re players in a bigger picture. We’re members of a community and cit...more

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Aug 03, 2010 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wish this book could be required reading for all women and also be required in public schools for young girls. It is a cautionary tale of how excessive dieting/exercising can cause permanent damage to one's body. This is Crystal Renn's story. Crystal Renn is currently the most famous plus-size model in the world. When she was discovered at age 14, however, Ms. Renn was told by a modeling scout to lose nine inches off her hips. At 5'9, Ms. Renn starved and exercised her body down to 95 pounds!...more

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Jun 30, 2010 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 12th-grade

In the midst of all this madness and corruption going on with society. Teenagers usually feel that under societal pressures, they need to conform to societal demands like being skinny. But in this case being skinny does not mean that one is pretty. Being skinny does not mean that one is fit and works hard because everyone comes in all shapes and sizes. That is what makes people so unique. It makes people an individual that has its own personal style. Renn criticizes the society for placing such...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Mickey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was torn on how to rate this book. Part of me wanted to give it 5 stars due to the fact that the author does a good job of explaining her ordeal trying to conform tto the unreasonable standars of beauty set by the fashion world and how she learned to love herself for who/what she is and embrace her natural size. The other part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs that size 12 is NOT a plus size- it's the size of the average American woman and vastly ignored/underrated and therefore rat...more

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May 09, 2010 Caitlin Constantine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Renn wrote this book with one of the former staff writers/editors for Sassy magazine, which right there automatically earned this book three stars. But what pushed it up to four stars is the fact that Renn writes about her life - first as an anorexic teenage model of limited success and later as the most sought-after plus-size model - with such in-your-face fierceness that I couldn't help but love her. Like, in one passage, she addresses people who insist that bias against thin people exists wit...more

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Jan 27, 2010 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, 2010

I don't read many memoirs or autobiographies, I tend to find them poorly written. Usually the person writing it is not a writer, so the less than stellar writing skills make sense. That is also the case with this book.

I loved her story, and for the most part it was told well...but there were editing mistakes that were bothersome, such as "This event happened on Christmas Eve and the next day at school...." There were also parts where I kept thinking "She sounds so young" and then remembered that...more

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Dec 06, 2009 Aimee Stacy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I saw so much of myself in this book. I have fought the battle of the body image my entire life. I had my bout with anorexia--the size 0's being too big, exercising maniacally, my hair falling out in clumps--and have worked hard to get healthy again. A few weeks ago, I called my younger sister a bitch for being skinnier than I am after two kids when I've had none. She (rightfully) took umbrage, and I tried to explain to her that the highest compliment a woman can give another woman is to call he...more

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Jul 26, 2010 Keri rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 3-pg13

I didn't realize the author of this book is famous (which I think is kind of funny. She sounds a little self-important in the book). I thought the book was going to be mostly a memoir of the author's struggle with an eating disorder, but it was more like a full auto-biography. The bulk of the story was split between her eating disorder (which, for better or worse, is fascinating to me) and the modeling industry (which, for better or worse, has absolutely no appeal to me). Then there were a handf...more

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May 14, 2010 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic, 2010

I finished reading this at 3am during a fit of insomnia. After reading Andre Agassi’s book, Open, last week I wanted to stay away from autobiographies for awhile, because it would be hard to find one just as good. I had requested Crystal Renn’s book from the library awhile ago, and it happened to come in just when I’d sworn to read something like a novel, or Vikings: A History (to go with my Swedish themed 2010). The book on vikings didn’t work out, so I tip-toed into this, and ended up devourin...more

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Jan 13, 2010 Bridget rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: body-image, books-about-peoples, ya-nonfic, non-fic, feminist-related, 2010-reads, new-adult

I was super excited to read this, then I actually started it and I was kind of let down. I thought the voice, and the story, at the beginning were kind of... hm. Not what I was hoping for? I guess that's the best way to put it. But after I got into the second chapter something shifted and I really got into her story.

This is a wonderful book. It's a fascinating glimpse into the world of modeling for those of us who only see the end product, it has humor and witty asides all over the place, and t...more

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Jul 11, 2011 Rebekah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: coming-of-age, food, health, memoir-biography, non-fiction, others-recommend

This book is a haunting look at what our culture does to girls with respect to body image. To look at a healthy, young girl and tell her, "You can be a super star, but you'll have to lose weight first," simply opens the door to self-destructive behaviors. Each of us has a different body type and should be celebrated for who and what we are.

By way of critique, I found it distracting that Renn (or rather Marjorie Ingall, who actually wrote the book) quickly switches from a chronological telling o...more This book is a haunting look at what our culture does to girls with respect to body image. To look at a healthy, young girl and tell her, "You can be a super star, but you'll have to lose weight first," simply opens the door to self-destructive behaviors. Each of us has a different body type and should be celebrated for who and what we are.

By way of critique, I found it distracting that Renn (or rather Marjorie Ingall, who actually wrote the book) quickly switches from a chronological telling of the story to telling the themes of the story years ahead and back to a chronological telling. It was hard to follow, and I kept having to reread or just guess what year we were talking about.

SPOILER:
Also, once Renn embraces being a plus model, she writes a lot about how each person's body has a set point weight. She says that dieting never works because we are trying to force our bodies below our designed set point weight. She also discusses the "obesity epidemic" in the United States. While I don't dispute her point that the parameters of obesity have changed, thus pushing millions of Americans, including professional athletes, over the edge, I do think that it is unhealthy to be too far into that category. After reading her book, it appears that Renn is saying that you are "healthy" or at your "set point" regardless of what size you are, if that's where your body has settled and a weight that you don't have to work too hard to maintain.

I think that this is also the wrong body image. I do agree that some women who are 5' 9" should naturally weigh 140 pounds while others are naturally their healthiest closer to 175. It's hard to believe, though, that 225 pounds would be the natural set point for a woman of that height. I wish that Renn would have focused more on eating healthfully and exercising and letting that determine your body's healthy weight. Once she gave up her anorexia, she naturally fell into a healthy pattern of eating and worked to regain healthy exercise habits. For many women (and men) in America, healthy eating is the problem. either we fall into anorexia or we fall into binging. Neither one will give you a healthy body.(less)

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Sep 07, 2010 Erika rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, food

Crystal Renn is currently the most successful "plus-size" model in the fashion industry. Found by a traveling modeling scout at age 13 in her hometown of Clinton, MS, she was told that if she could lose 9 inches off her hips, she could become a supermodel. So she lost the weight, developing an eating disorder in the process. She drops out of high school, moves to New York and begins her modeling career. The promises of fame and fortune never materialize and the self-imposed starvation begins to...more Crystal Renn is currently the most successful "plus-size" model in the fashion industry. Found by a traveling modeling scout at age 13 in her hometown of Clinton, MS, she was told that if she could lose 9 inches off her hips, she could become a supermodel. So she lost the weight, developing an eating disorder in the process. She drops out of high school, moves to New York and begins her modeling career. The promises of fame and fortune never materialize and the self-imposed starvation begins to take its toll on her body and her mind. She finally snaps, decides to start eating again, and then makes it big as a plus-size model.

An interesting story, to be sure, but the book is lacking in many respects. First off, it is difficult to really find enough compelling material for a memoir when the subject is a mere 22 years old, so much of the filler content is downright boring. Her ghostwriter is a magazine writer, and it shows. This book should have been half its length, and undergone more rigorous editing. Renn's extremely offensive bad language throughout is off-putting, and a strange choice for someone trying to reach out to younger girls. It's a shame that the language in the book will certainly preclude many school/church/community groups from possibly using it as a launchpad for discussions on body image.

That said, it may be as well that they don't. While there is some solid research and information about eating disorders, I felt like her portrayal of recovery was simplistic. As in, you just start eating again and then you love yourself. I'm not an expert on the topic, but that seems not only false, but a dangerous message to be sending to young people who may be struggling with the disease. There is no mention of her seeking any kind of psychiatric help or counseling of any kind.

Also alarming was the fact that too much of the book feels like Renn is defending her choice to be 'fat,' (and she IS considered slightly medically overweight at 5'9" and 165 lbs). She is strident in her attempt to 'de-bunk the myth of the obesity epidemic.' Her supporting evidence (to the claim that obesity is not really the problem that the diet industry makes it out to be) seems misapplied, and she takes the argument too far.

While I am totally in agreement that as a culture we need to celebrate many different ideals of beauty, I felt like her vigorous defense of 'fatness' along with her admission that she has taken up smoking, and refuses to exercise (being too emotionally difficult, as exercise addiction was a big part of her illness) paints a picture of a person with a lot more recovering to do, and perhaps not quite ready to be the voice and role model of the true health she supposedly espouses.

It's really only worth reading if you have a strong interest in eating disorders or the modeling industry. Otherwise, it's a pass. Just watch Renn's morning show appearance clips on Youtube to get the gist of her story. (less)

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Jan 19, 2010 Cari rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, eating-disorders, memoirs, self-discovery

The first two-thirds of Hungry, wherein she discusses her descent into anorexia and then her recovery in linear, focused fashioned makes it rise to the top of the masses of eating disorder memoirs on the market. Without a doubt this is one of the better written memoirs on the subject, and it has something a lot sorely lack: a sense of humor. Also, there's the feeling while reading (and who knows how accurate this is, but for her sake, I hope it's authentic) that Renn truly is in recovery from he...more The first two-thirds of Hungry, wherein she discusses her descent into anorexia and then her recovery in linear, focused fashioned makes it rise to the top of the masses of eating disorder memoirs on the market. Without a doubt this is one of the better written memoirs on the subject, and it has something a lot sorely lack: a sense of humor. Also, there's the feeling while reading (and who knows how accurate this is, but for her sake, I hope it's authentic) that Renn truly is in recovery from her eating disorder and has her whole, healthy life ahead of her now. Far too many of the ED memoirs lack that, are written by women desperate to say they're recovered even as you can feel them teetering on the brink. Some pay lip service to recovery while the opposite is blatantly apparent, undermining claims by providing what is basically a "How To" manual for the likewise ill. (Hornbacher, I'm looking at you.) Well-written, funny, and smart, when Renn is talking about her main focus, the book is great, reads smoothly, and keeps the reader interested.

Unfortunately, when she allows herself to get side-tracked? That's where the last one-third of the book comes in, and it's filled with diatribes about society, the BMI scale, and public opinion that go on for pages and pages too long. (Oddly enough, she never really takes the modeling industry itself to task in a serious, in-depth way. Brave enough to share with the world her inner turmoil; not stupid enough to take on the industry that is her livelihood.) These rants are boring, the writing suffers, and the information is suspect. With no sources cited, Renn's ramblings about health and BMI should be taken with large grains of salt, as she gives no citation to the information she is citing. Until I can study the context of the information she's putting forth, I will remain suspicious. Statistics, numbers, and basic findings can be twisted to suit any aim; it's the context that counts. Unfortunately, there is none presented by Renn's own.

Skip the last chapter entirely. It's nothing but an extended cheerleading section for the healthy and/or overweight.

Her recovery is presented almost as a miracle, which is jarring and fundamentally untrue. "And one day I decided to eat..." is nice, but there's no way that's all there was to it. The decision to get healthier is the first step, a required step, but I do not believe for a second that she simply started eating again and that was that. There had to be a lot more behind-the-scenes machinations: nutritionists, therapists, support, etc. Maybe those memories were too painful or simply too personal for what Renn was trying to accomplish. Fair enough, no blame for that. But even just a sentence to recognize the fact that it wasn't so simple as simply picking up a fork would have kept her success from feeling demeaning to all those young girls, women, and men who haven't been able to make a recovery no matter how hard they tried. There's a reason eating disorders are the deadliest mental illness. And there's no reason to feed into ignorance of the judgmental masses by implying all that one has to do is pick up a plate. Yes, one needs to decide, "I'm going to eat," but there is so much more than that, and on showing that, Renn failed.

A good editor should have taken care of these issues. It's disappointing, because with some liberal cutting and editing near the end, Hungry easily could have earned a five star rating.

But like I said, that's only the final one-third of the book. Read up to the point where she signs with Ford and gains weight along with a healthier outlook, and then stop. At that point, if you close the cover and put it aside, there will be nothing to complain about. A satisfying read.

As cliche as it sounds, there is hope in the pages of Hungry, and for that alone, this is recommended. A stand-out in the genre.(less)

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Apr 13, 2010 Shannan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Shannan by: cardigan empire website

Crystal Renn was a former "straight-sized" model who developed a serious eating disorder while trying to make it in the fashion world as a young model. When she could no longer lose enough weight, she decided to become a plus sized model and her career skyrocketed.

Although she writes from a familiar point of view and acts like an expert on the subject of disordered eating, I appreciated her insights and some of her arguments made sense to me. As I approach my own weight loss journey after I giv...more

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Nov 22, 2010 Birgit rated it 5 of 5 stars

Through an interview with plus-size model Crystal Renn on TV this book first came to my attention. I knew, I had to read it and that's exactlly what I did.
In this autobiography the reader is taking a journey from Crystals childhood into the present. A lot of things could have gone wrong with this kind of book, but I soon found myself enthralled by the story of this intelligent and beautiful young woman and most of all, her courage to give insight into her world in such a painfully honest way.
Tho...more

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Nov 22, 2010 Jess rated it 5 of 5 stars

Crystal Renn's Hungry is a fantastic book. Renn is a plus-sized model who began her career as a "straight-sized" model when she was just a teenager. In her efforts to lose weight and achieve the desired thinness, she developed severe anorexia. The food obsession, exercise, and modeling assignments consumed her life. At 5'9", she dropped to 95 pounds. Finally she had what she calls an "epiphany." Long story short, she accepted herself, nurtured herself back to health, and became a plus-sized mode...more

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Jul 22, 2011 Anna Ryan-Punch rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading 'Hungry' straight after reading 'Wasted' is a little bit like eating low-fat ice-cream. It's sweet, makes you feel quite good about yourself, but it's ultimately a bit watery and unsatisfying.

While it's great to read a story of recovery and plus-size modeling success, the psychological aspects of Crystal's anorexia seem pretty unexamined.

Neglected and abandoned by her biological mother at 3 months, she was brought up by her grandmother (and repeatedly rejected by her biological mother ov...more Reading 'Hungry' straight after reading 'Wasted' is a little bit like eating low-fat ice-cream. It's sweet, makes you feel quite good about yourself, but it's ultimately a bit watery and unsatisfying.

While it's great to read a story of recovery and plus-size modeling success, the psychological aspects of Crystal's anorexia seem pretty unexamined.

Neglected and abandoned by her biological mother at 3 months, she was brought up by her grandmother (and repeatedly rejected by her biological mother over the course of her life). I find it a little hard to swallow (excuse the pun) when she says: "Some armchair psychologists might also suggest that yearning for my birth mother or the grief at being rejected by her where what detonated my future problems with anorexia. Those people would be wrong. My problems derived from a perfect storm of factors, but none of them triggered by my childhood." None? So be abandoned by your mother had no psychological effects, AT ALL? Hmm.

I also find her depiction of how she just 'snapped out' of her anorexia (without any form of therapy or treatment) problematic. While it's great for her if that happened, it's disheartening for those who can't 'snap out of it'. It's possible that the comparatively short length of her eating disorder contributed to her fast recovery, but projecting the simplistic idea of 'I just started to eat' is frustrating for both sufferers and their families.

I was most interested in the sections where she writes about moral panic over obesity. The statistics were especially revealing:

"Everyone loves to trumpet statistics about how much fatter Americans have gotten in recent years. About 65% of Americans are classified as overweight or obese. But almost no one pointed out that 29 million people became overweight overnight in 1998, when the government changed its body mass index's 'overweight' category from 27 to 25. (Incidentally, seven of the nine members of the government's obesity task force were directors of weight-loss clinics - making thousands more people instantly 'overweight' was great for them!)"

While I found her descriptions of dresses/photo shoots towards the end of the book tedious (I'm not much of a fashion guru, hearing dresses described in detail maketh me yawn), her awareness of the ridiculous aspects of modeling are often very funny:

"There was a photographer who kept screaming, 'I need to SEE WHO YOU ARE! Show me EMOTION!' He wouldn't tell me which emotion he wanted. He just kept repeating, 'EMOTION!' Finally, I started screaming about wanting a fat-free blueberry muffin. I started out yelling about the muffin, but then I started to luxuriate in it, pounding out a prose poem about the muffin...I wound up weeping for my fat-free blueberry muffin. Afterward the photographer clasped my hand, looked deeply into my eyes, and said, 'Beautiful, beautiful blueberry story, man.'"

Love a good blueberry story.(less)

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Sep 14, 2012 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads, non-fiction

When Hungry was first released it went straight on my Amazon wishlist, however, as the months whiled by and other books came and went, eventually it fell by the wayside. However, when I spied a copy of it in a charity shop for just £2.50, I kind of had to buy it. The subject matter of Hungry is incredibly important and eye-opening, but for me, there were times when the messages that came through the novel were rather mixed (as a disclaimer, I am in no way a 'plus size').

Hungry tells Crystal Renn...more When Hungry was first released it went straight on my Amazon wishlist, however, as the months whiled by and other books came and went, eventually it fell by the wayside. However, when I spied a copy of it in a charity shop for just £2.50, I kind of had to buy it. The subject matter of Hungry is incredibly important and eye-opening, but for me, there were times when the messages that came through the novel were rather mixed (as a disclaimer, I am in no way a 'plus size').

Hungry tells Crystal Renn's story on how she went from starving herself to be thin, to becoming a hugely successful plus-size (and by 'plus size' we're talking UK 16) model. Renn grew up in a complex family background, but had big dreams of attending university and studying law. However, at the age of about 14 she is told by a modelling scout that she could become a supermodel, so long as she lost a considerable amount of weight. She achieves this, through developing a hugely problematic relationship with food and an obsession with exercise. However, gaining a modelling contract is not as lucrative as she believed and it is only upon her cracking and deciding to become a plus size model that she really found success.

Her story is an important one, that highlights the numerous hypocrisies within the fashion industry. The idea that grown men and women have no problem in telling a fifteen year old that their thighs are too big is utterly heartbreaking. It also shows the growing problems that many young (and even more sadly very young) women have in regards to their bodies-and the fact that few people really know how to talk about eating disorders that don't conform to either anorexia (not eating at all) or bulimia (binge eating & then being sick). Renn also shows the problems with regulations in the fashion industry, which tend to use the words 'should' and 'to the best of our knowledge' in regards to banning young models or those with a dangerously low BMI. Hungry is also an engaging read, whilst it's unclear whether Renn or Marjorie Ingall was mostly behind the writing, the book is pacey and I read it over a four hour babysitting session.

However, despite the fact that Renn continually says that there can be naturally slender people some of her writing does fall into the camp of bashing one group to empower another. She point blank dismisses the idea that skinny people can quite suffer in the same way that larger people do with body confidence, the only women who are described as truly sexy and attractive are other plus size women; and she also brings up the idea that men prefer curvy women. Although, no doubt, larger women who have struggled with body confidence issues will find this welcoming, as a smaller person this largely left me feeling worse than I did when I started reading the book. I feel that Renn or Ingall should have made more of an effort to celebrate body acceptance for all sizes; which was attempted but undermined by the idea that 'skinny people have it easy' (as someone who has had total strangers comment on my weight & who has been told the reason I'm single is due to my lack of curves, that is far from the case).

Hungry tells an important story, and Renn's tale should be used as an example of body acceptance. However, as a book to me it lacks a cohesion that could make the message empowering for all women. (less)

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Dec 29, 2011 VBergen rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

this is an eulogy to the fatness. The book starts with the story of a girl with family troubles, she is obsesive-compulsive and finally she got anorexy in order to get thinner to travel to New York and be famous according to a scout promises. It goes like she was thin, she could not eat, she used to get angry easy, she exercised a lot, and her life was miserable. Then she got fat again, the scout asked her to lose weight or adviced to be a plus size model. Crystal preferd the pluse size model an...more

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Mar 17, 2011 sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

There were some extremely worthy aspects of this book although for me they were a bit preachy-to-the-choir: the culture's role in creating an epidemic of negative body image in young women, the incredible dysfunction of the modeling industry (something Renn is refreshingly honest about), the alleged linkage (and actual lack thereof) between weight and good health, the sexism, racism, and classism implicit in our current attitudes about weight. Plus it was enjoyable to read these critiques from s...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Kristen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

What is shocking is not Renn's story - it is probably the story of thousands of aspiring models and an estimated 8 million Americans have eating disorders. What is shocking, even to a fashion lover, is how models are seen as commodities, and the lack of care their agencies have about them as humans. Renn can get a self-aggrandizing here - it is her book, so I guess she has the right to do that. I particularly dislike her constant declarations that she went back to her natural body size to be "he...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Joanna rated it 3 of 5 stars

I came across this book online and was able to read the first few pages. I went to the book store and found it for under $10.

I enjoyed her story very much. There was a big chunk in between her anorexia and recovery where I felt it drug on and on and on, mostly her talking about how the fashion industry works and unrealistic expectations for how we "should" look. It eventually gets back to the rest of her story, but I had set it down and it took me a few months to want to pick it back up and fin...more

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title link	preview: Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves
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Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves

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