‘I lived on Nutella, bananas and noodle soup for a few months’
Kim Feenstra starts 2024 completely happy & healthy, with herself, her body and with her current position in life. In Glamial, the model talks about the insecurities she encountered in her career and how she deals with her body these days.
Heroin chic
Kim herself had to deal with insecurities at a young age. “As a model – I have been in this profession for twenty years – there is often something ‘wrong’: I was too tall or too short, too fat or too thin, with too blonde or too dark hair… When I was nineteen I moved for a years to Paris, where my office was. I was immediately thrown in at the deep end.” During that time, she received many rejections. “Twenty years ago, customers went for thin, thinner, thinnest. That heroin chic look from Kate Moss was still hot,” she says. “As a model you had to meet those requirements, with a hip circumference of 88 centimeters. I gained weight at 91… For now that is very slim, but at the time it was seen as too fat.”
Living on Nutella and noodle soup
“I didn’t consciously start eating less, but that did happen,” Kim continues. “I still earned little and had no parents who could give me anything financially. So I got pocket money from my agency: fifty euros a week. I had to pay for my Paris metro card to travel from one casting to another, and a telephone card,” says the model. “I had maybe ten euros left over to eat every week. I lived on Nutella, bananas and noodle soup for a few months. I can laugh about it now: it was intense, but I proved to myself and others that thanks to hard work – and my elephant skin – I made it,” says Kim.
Exciting secret
Kim is now also a mother of her 3-year-old son Brooklyn. “Motherhood has made me more confident. I wasn’t concerned at all about extra pounds or my postpartum body. On the contrary, I was so grateful that – after an IVF process – I was able to experience a pregnancy. And I thought my growing body was so beautiful that I even missed my belly after giving birth,” she says. Now she exercises three to four times a week. “To be active, but also to stay mentally fit. For me it’s really about that combination, and not necessarily about the so-called perfect body.”
“Yes, I have felt tighter in my body at times, but I am satisfied at the moment,” says Kim. “Also on my face, free of botox and fillers. They often affect the authenticity of a face and as a model I don’t want that,” she explains. “I do go to the beautician every month, I take a lot of water and collagen powder and I swear by peelings and connective tissue massages. That is wonderful self-care.” And that’s how she feels about wearing lingerie. “Yes, even on just a Tuesday under my gray jogging suit. I wear lingerie first and foremost for myself, as an exciting little secret…”
You can read the full interview with Kim in the latest Glamial. Djamila Celina and Eva Simons also explain how they start the new year happy & healthy. In stores from tomorrow!
Text: Agnes Hofman | NL Image
