Back in the early aughts, an agent gave me the following unsolicited advice: “Just eat spinach and 12 almonds for every meal. And consider having your hips shaved.” Imaging a surgeon taking a chainsaw to my muffin top, I slowly backed out of her office, fearing her mid-size city modeling agent goons (who were surely hiding behind the potted fig trees) would pin me to a stretcher. “Not for beauty!” I’d cry. “I’ll only have my hips shaved out of medical necessity!”
Who’d have thunk that all these years later I’d receive the same ding dang advice (minus the encouragement of anorexic behavior), this time desperately solicited from an orthopedist, because poses like this make my hips burn hotter than Hephaestus’ forge.

I can’t say that my upcoming hip reconstruction surgery will somehow transform me into the Japanese modeling sensation that crazy agent said I’d become “with better measurements,” but it will make it abundantly easier to walk and sleep, both of which, at the moment, feel like luxuries enjoyed only by young, healthy people. Modern medicine, however, promises more for old mare’s like me.
So stick around. You’re about to learn more about hip arthroscopy than you ever anticipated.
And if you take a meeting with an agent who tells you to shave your hips, learn from my mistakes and tell her to fuck. right. off.
📸 by the amazing Diliana Deltcheva