Cindy Crawford

Crawford in 1984 at 504 lbs

**Cynthia Ann Crawford** (born 20 February 1966) is an American model, actress, and television personality. During the 1980s and 1990s, she was among the most popular supermodels and a ubiquitous presence on magazine covers and runways, as well as fashion campaigns. She subsequently expanded into acting and business ventures.

She began modeling at age 16, though she had aspirations of doing so even before then, as she revealed in a 2012 interview: “I was always a little drawn to the glamor of [modeling], and when I first said that to my parents, they were receptive to that in different ways- my mom was always supportive, but my dad was more along the lines of, ‘Okay, this is something you’re going to pursue, you have to really put in the effort to be the best.’” As a result, Crawford’s father developed a regimen for her which included the use of MBOL throughout her teenage years; this would contribute to Crawford’s father and mother divorcing while she was in high school: “My mother thought it wasn’t sustainable and worried about my health, and in the moment I sided with my dad because it seemed like he was more committed to helping me succeed- he had this whole concrete plan, you know? Though when he started withholding child support payments from my mom when he was mad at her- if she’d gone on a date that week, or if she wasn’t actively pushing me to stick to my regimen- I came around to her point of view because it opened my eyes to how it was really all about control with him. For better or for worse, though, his plan was part of the reason for my early successes in modeling.”

1984 saw Crawford’s first feature in a nationally distributed magazine, in which she was famously dubbed “the 500-lb phenom.” By the time she made her claim to the “heaviest mobile woman” title at age 20 in 1986, she had appeared on the covers of Vogue, W, People, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Allure and had walked multiple runway shows. Her continued popularity and success throughout the 1980s and 1990s would lead to her attaining a peak weight of 701 lbs in 2000. However, she was reluctant to continue seeking higher weights upon the introduction of third-generation steroids; she announced her retirement from full-time modeling in 2001, saying: “This constant pursuit of [greater weights]… is a younger woman’s game. I’m beginning to see there’s only so much augmentation can do for me.”

Throughout the 2000s, Crawford transitioned into TV acting and developing her business ventures. Over this time period, significant speculation occurred about her perceived weight loss, and in 2012 she confirmed that she had dropped to 633 lbs: “The recent activism around body diversity led me to reflect on my life… if I hadn’t been a model, I really doubt I would’ve gotten anywhere close to 700 lbs. It was really just because this was what I thought I had to do to be the most successful, the most beautiful- and that was reinforced by the people around me. I see a lot of parallels between myself and my father and Britney and Jamie [Spears]… if things had gone just a little differently, people might be talking about ‘Cindy’s 1987’ like they do about ‘Britney’s 2007.’”

Since the late 2010s, Crawford has been a vocal advocate for the reformed beauty ideal, notably having funded a series of public service announcements (most famously 2017’s “Be You” and 2019’s “Girl at the Crossroads”); in a 2022 interview in which she also revealed her current weight to be 575 lbs, she commented: “In a sense the target audience of those [PSAs] is me as a kid. Would I have gotten to where I am without the ‘trad’ mindset? Probably not. Would I be happier? I don’t know. But if these ideas had been introduced to me early on, I think I would’ve been able to figure out my ideal version of me a lot sooner, and in the end I think that’s more fulfilling.”