Bria Murphy claims some models resort to eating cotton balls soaked in orange juice to stay thin
A young model is sharing the scary tricks of her trade.
Bria Murphy, the 23-year-old daughter of comedian/actor Eddie Murphy, recently revealed some of the drastic measures her fellow models take to stay thin.
"Lots of girls get addicted to drugs and anorexia, it's — there’s a whole list of things, because it’s a lot of pressure to be perfect," she tells Good Morning America.
Admitting to feeling the pressure to keep the weight off in an industry that scrutinizes young women's bodies — "Some will be like, 'Oh, your nose is too big. Your butt’s too big. Oh, your legs are flabby,'" she says of clients' critiques — Murphy claims that some of her peers take extreme measures to maintain their impossibly thin physiques.
"I've heard of people eating the cotton balls with the orange juice…they dip it in the orange juice and then they eat the cotton balls to help them feel full, because the cotton’s not doing anything. It’s just dissolving. And it makes you think you’re full, but you’re not," she says.
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Murphy, who hopes to model for Victoria's Secret in the future, isn't the first person to accuse models of this unhealthy approach to weight loss.
Janice Celeste, the mother of model Sessilee Lopez, self-published a book called Making of a Supermodel in which she writes about the same bizarre method.
"I’ve seen some life-threatening measures models have gone through to lose weight. Luckily my daughter has never had a weight problem that kick-boxing couldn’t solve. I personally know of one model who dipped cotton balls in orange juice and consumed it to feel full. Later it came out that she had anorexia," she writes.
Model Sara Ziff has also seen young models snacking on cotton balls, as has model Kira Dikhtyar.
Former Vogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements writes about something similar — tissue-paper eating — in her book, The Vogue Factor.
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Nourish NYC dietitian and nutritionist Marissa Lippert gives Beauty High her expert opinion on the possible side effects from a cotton-ball diet.
"Well, there's got to be malnutrition going on, and it's likely that if they keep a diet like this up, their bodies will go into starvation mode, meaning their metabolism will slow down and their body will process any fat and protein available, which leads to becoming dangerously skinny," she warns.
"Plus, because cotton is not meant to be digested, it could be harmful to their esophagus and intestinal tract. There's likely to be constipation, which they might be combating with laxatives. I would absolutely not recommend this to anyone."
Models, just say no to cotton balls.