Skinny Tanya

"I never wanted to be admired by men, anyone can be seen as a sex symbol, whether you are on the cover of a magazine or sitting behind a desk. Sex sells and everyone knows that and women allow themselves to be that," says Tanya Van Graan, actress and model. Born on a game farm in South Africa, the beautiful Tanya suffered from an eating disorder as a child, which made her portly. It's amazing that nowadays the South African media portrays Tanya as being too skinny!

Speaking with Gemma Wilkie of Rapid Info, Tanya Van Graan also spoke of how magazine cover girls are digitally enhanced to look perfect, and how this creates a negative body image in the average girl's mind.

"The world has become obsessed with being skinny. Girls want to mimic certain people, it is very sad because they lose their identity and who they are. These girls need to understand that some of these magazines make you look a lot thinner than they really are. People just want to be accepted, people need to see themselves as individuals and decide what they want to achieve."

Tanya herself has been on these magazine covers; she was voted the sexiest woman in South Africa in an online poll of the men's magazine FHM....was Miss August on the FHM 2006 Calendar and was crowned "Worlds Sexiest Woman" by FHM (South Africa)last year (2007). Van Graan actually studied to be an actress; she majored in acting for stage and musicals at the AFDA in Johannesburg and also studied musical theatre at the Tswane University of Technology. As Tanya says, "My passion lies with film, which is where all this started, modelling just happened."

She has appeared on South African TV shows and acted in one Hollywood film, Jean Claude Van Damme starrer Starship Troopers: Marauders.

Things were not so glamorous for Tanya Van Graan while growing up on her family's game farm near Nelspruit, in the lowvelds of South Africa. She suffered from a negative self-image as a child, growing up in the shadow of a pretty confident older sister: "I was a chubby tomboy. My sister, Liezl, was the pretty one, the achiever. I was the ugly duckling, the one who didn’t shine – so I turned to food. Later I learnt to turn to other things when I felt down. I tried everything – from horse riding to playing the violin – and eventually found my niche in acting."

Tanya came out of her shell, and learnt to appreciate herself, at the all-girls Mejuffrou Nelspruit High School. This is where she won her first beauty title. So how did the ugly duckling turn into a swan?

"I lost a lot of weight from dancing, other than that I have tried everything, I have had personal trainers. In my industry you have to look good, but some training makes
you too big and bulky. I often do Bikram Yoga, this class lasts an hour and a half and is done in a hot room. This is a great way to relax and forget about all the other things that need to be done during the day. I also eat healthy because I believe that food should be enjoyed but not used for comfort. Food is fuel for your body."

But dancing and Yoga did not turn beautiful Tanya into skinny Tanya. In an interview she said, "I don't deliberately try to look like this. My life has just been terribly hectic recently. I'm not trying to be funny and I'm definitely not a drug addict. When people go through difficult times, every individual handles it differently. Some put on weight, others lose weight - in my case, the kilograms drop off."

"There are things like bone structure and other factors that have to be considered. It's too easy for people to look only at a number on a scale," Van Graan added. "I generally eat healthily, but I want to focus more on myself now. It's important to have a balance in one's life."

Dancing became all the more important for Tanya when she took part in South Africa's version of "Dancing With The Stars" called "Strictly Come Dancing". Tanya recalls, "For Strictly Come Dancing I trained eight hours a day for 14 weeks. I got a lot of satisfaction out of it, even though I didn’t win. It boosted my confidence."

The eventual winner of the show was Tanya's ex-boyfriend, Emmanuel Castis: "My relationship with Emmanuel eventually ended a week before the show started. It was tough being on the same show, but we’re both adults and we handled it quite well. He really deserved to win." Despite still being a relative newcomer to the acting business, Tanya Van Graan has started her own charity "The Tanya van Graan Foundation of Hope"!