In her teens and early 20s, Samantha Benjamin squeezed into shared rooms in cramped and messy model apartments. When she waited at castings or killed time traveling from job to job, she and her fellow models traded weight-loss tricks: illicit Adderall, starvation diets, even parasite ingestion—and later, unprescribed Ozempic. “Models were always whispering about extreme weight-loss stuff,” she says. Benjamin was fairly successful, booking commercial jobs and the occasional editorial work. But at 27, she largely stepped away from the industry.

Benjamin, who now works as a social media manager and lives with her boyfriend and puppies in Los Angeles, is clear about one of the primary reasons: "Girls are getting called fat. Nobody is mincing words." In an industry where the typical sample is a size zero, weight has always been central to a model’s success. But now, GLP-1 weight-loss medications offer a tempting short-cut to thinness. Models, modeling agents, casting directors, and designers are all noting a startling return to skinniness on the runway. “Models have definitely gotten smaller,” says Zoe Latta of the New York fashion brand Eckhaus Latta. “I think it's a combination of GLP-1s and a pendulum swing to extreme thinness being an idealized look again.” The Fall-Winter 2026 Vogue Business size inclusivity report identified declines in both mid- and plus-size representation on the runway, to the lowest levels since the publication started tracking this data three years ago.

“When GLP-1s were introduced, a lot of models wondered, ‘If I want to do these higher shows, if I want to work for these brands, then do I get skinnier?’” says Grace Breuning, a New York curve model. “And then a lot of models got skinnier.”

Ozempic’s pervasiveness cannot be overstated. Since its FDA approval for weight loss in 2021, one in eight Americans has taken a GLP-1. In January, Wegovy (a GLP-1) became available in pill form for as little as $150 per month; this month, the FDA approved a second pill, manufactured by Eli Lily under the brand name Foundayo. A needle aversion is less and less of an obstacle for anyone tempted by semaglutide drugs. But along with its legitimate use for obesity and diabetes comes the potential for abuse. “It’s almost like the new-millennia cocaine,” says one major model agent.

The modeling industry has long played a role in perpetuating unrealistic body standards, though there have been cyclical advances and setbacks. A wave of model deaths linked to starvation in 2006 and 2007 led to BMI reforms and requirements. In 2017, Kering and LVMH joined forces on a “model charter” that outlined rules around size, like banning stringent requirements in casting calls. And the body-positivity movement of the 2010s and early 2020s—when models like Ashley Graham, Paloma Elsesser, and Tess Holliday created a dialogue around size inclusivity—seemed to build on promising momentum.

But now, with a few prominent exceptions, it seems like skinny is back, and GLP-1s are contributing to the trend. Though semaglutide drugs can still be a taboo topic, a handful of models are beginning to speak more openly about them. “When I lost weight, I started to confirm a lot more work,” says model and reality TV star Brooks Nader, who has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and says she “micro-doses” the drug. “I was like, okay, I guess [the industry] likes me thinner.” (Nader still takes GLP-1s, despite concerns expressed by her family and doctor that she is improperly using them.)

“It’s become very, very trendy to be very, very skinny again,” says the 27-year-old model Lottie Moss. In 2024, Moss (Kate Moss’s younger half sister), who began her career as a teenager in 2016, was unusually candid about how Ozempic abuse landed her in the emergency room. A year and a half later, she still senses some of the same pressures. “You’re thinking, if celebrities are using it, it must be safe,” says Moss, who says she has friends who are buying Ozempic online. “You see high-profile people using it, and you think, ‘it must be beneficial.’”

In a counterintuitive wrinkle, some curve models are interested in taking the drugs to improve their health, but are worried about booking less work. Benjamin, who was briefly a curve model, says she felt at one point pressured to retain her larger proportions, despite what she deems the “unhealthy reasons” that contributed to her size. “They either want you to be thin or they want you to be a trophy of a curve model,” says Benjamin.

Breuning, who walked in Chanel shows in 2022 and 2023, says she has noticed a decline in casting models of her size (10-12) in recent years. These days, she mostly books commercial and beauty jobs. Some of her peers, formerly her size, have shrunk to a size 6-8. “I feel too big for this industry sometimes,” she says, and adds that the definition of “curve” and “plus-size” is shifting constantly. But ultimately, she says she believes in the significance of size representation: “I've never known thinness, and so seeing girls that looked like me was really important to me.”

The increased uniformity of body types in casting means that there is less possibility for the distinctive character that made some of the best models—whether the 5-foot-7 Kate Moss or the size-12 Precious Lee—bellwethers for change. “It's homogenized; it's not interesting; it's the same as everybody having veneers,” says Benjamin. “So many of the things that people are now paying thousands of dollars for are just making things more boring.”

“Five years ago, when you were seeing more curve models on the runway, you were also seeing women who were intellectual and articulate and had passions and stood up for things,” says Mina White, a director at IMG Models who has been a decades-long advocate for inclusive sizing. “And now once again, we're in this homogeneous Gattaca of talent,” she says, referring to the sci-fi film where eugenics governs society.

“Those [plus-size] women created a real conversation that was definitely necessary,” says Kyle Hagler, founder of No Smoking: Management and Consultancy Firm. But, he says, brands used them “to catch this wave of energy, just to ride the wave, while not producing garments that could fit them for general consumption—that’s problematic for me. It’s tokenism.”

Fashion, of course, is an industry that both reflects and dictates culture, and is also governed by business constraints. Including one or even ten curve models in a runway show does not necessarily mean a high fashion brand could sustain a business of plus-size garments. “I am a fat person,” says Latta, the co-designer of Eckhaus Latta. “And I'm proud of it. But expecting my brand to make plus-size clothes is preposterous. It would be an unsustainable form of business.”

“Nobody takes responsibility for it,” says Ashley Mears, a sociologist and former model who studies the modeling industry. There is a kind of chicken-egg argument underlying fashion’s fat shaming: “The problem is the sample sizes… No, the problem is the designers… No, the problem is the agents,” Mears says, parroting the kind of blame-shifting she’s witnessed. “Everybody's saying the market gets what it wants, but they are the market.”

“If we’ve gone back to skinny girls, it's because that is what the people who are running these houses and their casting directors and their stylists are dictating,” says James Scully, a former casting director who worked with Tom Ford during his Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent era. Scully, who now runs the upstate New York clothing store Jamestown Hudson, where he sells niche designers like Pas de Calais and Aspesi, is categorical: “It has nothing to do with what a customer wants.” One need only read the comments below runway images of hyper-thin models to see that the look disturbs the average observer.

“Someone has to wake them up,” says Scully of those in positions of power around casting. “It would be nice if one of those people came out and said, ‘Hey: this is bad, and we are trying to do something about the models doing things that are unhealthy for their bodies.”

And what if the models had more of a say? “I have been in this industry so long and I have opened myself up for critique in a way that a lot of people will never understand,” says Breuning, who says that she has no interest in changing her body just to get booked for a job. She says, “I can weather this storm.”