At a fitting for a Japanese menswear show in Paris in the summer of 2014, a group of elderly women from the designer's team gathered behind me to laugh and lightly slap my buttocks as the material stretched to cover my rear. But this wasn't the first time I had been called overweight, despite my jutting rib cage and hips.
I had walked the catwalk twice at Paris Fashion Week, worked with a range of talented photographers and stylists, and was part of a world filled with staggeringly beautiful people. After a quick glance, the casting director returned to his seat in the adjacent room and muttered to his stylist, 'He's beautiful, but he's fat.' Sound travels easily in a hard-floored warehouse I had moved to the changing room, but I heard his words clearly. I was exhausted after 14 hours of castings, and so I did what I was told and removed my undershirt to reveal my rather pallid chest. 'Take off your top and show me your torso,' he said. The casting director, a Dutch man in his 50s with a large paunch, looked at me, his eyes darting around my body.
