The beautiful Magali Amadei on the cover of Cosmopolitan (1994) looking so happy! But was she? "Every time I saw myself on the cover of a magazine, I marveled that I was able to make it through the photo shoot," says the Magali. She was alternately bingeing on food and then vomiting as much as seven times a day under the stress and pressure of looking thin. "Most people thought I must have been very, very happy at that time in my life," notes the French-born model. "But I wasn't."
Funny thing is, Magali Amadei is not a curvy plus-sized model like Crystal Renn, in fact she is naturally slim.
Magali Amadei was born 1974 in Nice (France) to French-Italian parents. She lived and studied in this warm coastal Mediterranean town——Magali was discovered by a modeling agent while in Nice and he encouraged her to move to New York. The beautiful French girl decided to take a year off, before starting college, and moved to New York where she started her modeling career. She never returned to finish her education.
Magali Amadei's eating disorders had actually started in school where someone told her she was fat....there were also troubles in her family, her brother's accident, all of which combined to cause her great anxiety, to tackle which she binged on food and then vomited for fear of gaining weight. At that point she wasn't completely bulimic. But after becoming a model, and being constantly judged by her looks, Magali became more and more worried about how eating food would change her body. By age 19 she had reached the stage of taking laxatives and vomiting seven times a day.
From her pictures Magali Amadei looked like she was happy, that she had it all, beauty, fame, money, but from the inside she was unhappy and suffering. Her lowest point was during a photo shoot for a French magazine, when she took 40 laxatives! Amadei found herself curled up on the bathroom floor at the studio, shaking, sweating and unable to move because of severe cramps. The episode sent off alarm bells for Amadei, who, at the age of 21, finally broke her own seven-year silence by telling someone about her problem.
Magali Amadei said in an interview with Malibu Magazine, "We live in a society where the message is, if you look good, you feel great, which is not true. At least in my case, it was not true. Every photo, every cover is retouched. I am not saying the fashion industry is evil, but people have to know the reality that the photos of the people are not real. Photoshop is a model's best friend, it can lengthen legs, shorten waists, what have you."
Models in real life don't look as they do in the magazines. And models in magazines don't feel the way they are shown: happy, famous, and rich. Magali's recovery from her eating disorder took a few years, with the help and support of her friends. Now she says, "I don't count calories, I don't own a scale and I don't weigh myself. If I want to eat a cookie, I'll eat it. I won't eat a low-fat, carb-free cookie, nor will I eat the whole bag of cookies like I use to."
This is what the fashion world does to young girls. They don't eat for fear of getting fat, they smoke or do drugs to fight hunger, and when they finally do eat they binge on food out of desperation......only to puke it all out due to their fear and anxiety.
Magali Amadei went on to become a spokeswoman for the National Eating Disorder Association; she travels around the US visiting schools and educating impressionable teenagers about eating disorders, and the reality of photoshopping in the fashion business. Magali also has a blog called 5resolutions....check out so her post on retouched pictures.
Magali still does modeling campaigns, though she has also moved into the world of acting, starting with the Broadway plays, A Matter of Dispute and Fiesta Wear. She had roles in movies like The Wedding Planner, House of D (directed by David Duchovny) and Taxi, in which her co-star was current top supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
Magali Amadei can speak four languages; French, Italian, English and Spanish and a little bit of Japanese. She got married in 2005 at the Reunion Island (Indian Ocean) to Baptiste, a Frenchman. Magali currently lives in the US and now is a mother to a young girl. Says Magali, "I have a daughter now. I want her to grow up with a strong self-esteem and a complete understanding of how all the glossy fantasies are created. I want to see changes in the fashion and beauty industries, too."
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