WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

Swimsuit Model, 53, Exposes Dark Details About ‘Heroin Chic’ Era

The catwalk legend is opening up about surviving the “devastating” period.

Supermodel Molly Sims is calling out the brutal body standards she faced at the height of the so-called “heroin chic” era—and the Hollywood stars who pretended their looks came from water and sleep.

The 53-year-old model and actress opened up about the darker side of the modeling industry, particularly during the 1990s and early 2000s, in an Us Weekly interview published earlier this month. She recalled being pressured to shrink herself when dramatically underweight bodies were in style.

“It was devastating,” Sims, a two-time Vogue cover model, told the outlet. “I came in during a difficult era called ‘heroin chic.’ [The look] was about 20 pounds underweight and very goth.”

The former Sports Illustrated and Victoria’s Secret runway model said people constantly picked her apart as she tried to break into the industry.

“I was told I was too fat, too thin, too blonde, too tall, too short,” she said. “I didn’t know my nose was crooked until I was 21.”

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Sims went on to appear in French Vogue, land major campaigns for brands including Old Navy and CoverGirl, and star on NBC’s Las Vegas for its five-season run.

But she said getting there meant cycling through nearly every trendy diet she could find.

“I’ve done every diet—the grapefruit diet, Atkins. There’s not one thing I didn’t do,” Sims said. “The amount of rice cakes one could consume was daunting; [everything was] low-fat and fat-free.”

She also pushed back against the beauty gatekeeping that made already-unattainable standards seem effortless.

“Hollywood people would say, ‘I just drink a lot of water, and I slept eight hours.’ I’m like, ‘No, you f---ing didn’t,’” Sims said.

Models, she added, were often much more candid with one another, swapping details about extreme diets and cosmetic maintenance.

“Early on, other models would help you,” she said. “Like, ‘I’m getting shots in my a--,’ or ‘I’m only going to drink grapefruit juice.’”

Sims is far from the only model to describe drastic methods for staying thin.

Fashion legend Beverly Johnson, 73, has said cocaine was commonly used by models as an appetite suppressant and recalled surviving on two eggs and a bowl of brown rice a week.

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“We did not eat, and every time you came to work they would say, ‘Yes! Chisel to the bone, girl. Yes,’ like congratulating you,” Johnson previously said.

For Sims, the pressure has not disappeared completely, but her relationship with her body has changed.

“I’m not trying to look like I’m 20,” she said. “I’m just trying to look the best I can at every age. I don’t want to be skinny; I want to be healthy. That’s a big mind shift.”

That mindset was put to the test this year when Sims returned to Sports Illustrated, appearing in the 2026 Swimsuit Issue and walking the magazine’s runway show during Miami Swim Week in May.

She admitted that preparing to step back into a swimsuit in front of cameras still gave her extra motivation to work out, but said the experience felt very different from her early modeling days.

“My whole world does not depend on how I look in a bikini—which is a really nice feeling!” she said.

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Her experience navigating the industry’s extreme body standards has also shaped how she raises her daughter—and how she feels about the possibility of another Sims entering the modeling world.

Sims said her daughter, whom she shares with film producer Scott Stuber, asked whether she could model if lacrosse and equestrian sports did not work out.

“I didn’t even make eye contact,” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’”

For now, Sims is determined not to pass down the fixation on weight that dominated so much of her own early career.

“We don’t talk about weight,” she said. “We talk about healthy eating in a very positive way.”

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Tamilore OshikanluContributor

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