Shirley Manson Credits Modeling Experience

GARBAGE frontwoman Shirley Manson calls her experience as a Calvin Klein model “the beginning of my life”. The 34-year-old rock star had suffered from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a disease in which sufferers are convinced they are unattractive, since she was a child, and yet when Klein chose her to appear in his 1999 poster campaign, her life changed forever. “I always turned up [for shoots] five hours late because I’d be fussing about my hair and make-up,” Manson tells Glamour magazine this month. “I’d spend two hours crying in the toilet – and whatever the result, I’d always think I looked disgusting.” In the Klein ads, though, she is pictured with her hair scraped back to show off a face free of make-up. “I’d never been seen like that in public,” she goes on. “I thought if I went out bare-faced, everyone would think I was repulsively ugly.” Now, free from the disease that she attributes to having been bullied at school about her red hair, Manson gives all the credit to Klein. “I realised that the picture would go all over the world, into every fashion magazine,” she explains. “If everyone had seen me with no make-up on, there was nothing to hide. And, I like the photograph. I looked… sweet. I actually wrote to Calvin Klein telling him that he’d done something incredible for me.” The December issue of Glamour is on sale now