NAKED TRUTH
Shunned by the fashion world when she was a size 2 teen, Hunter McGrady starved herself. Now, proudly full-figured, she puts it all out there in SI’s Swimsuit Issue
IN a stunning black-and-white photo for this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Hunter McGrady, 24, is the picture of confidence.
She’s nude, boldly looking at the camera, with a series of empowering words scrawled across her body. McGrady, who earned a coveted spot in this year’s issue, is a size 16 — the average for US women — and she’s not shy about showing off her curves. But she wasn’t always so fearless. As a child growing up in Los Angeles, she believed that being in front of the camera was in her blood. Raised by a model mother and an actor father, she always thought she would follow in their footsteps. She got an agent at age 16, but the nearly 6-foot-tall blonde quickly learned that even at a size 2, she was considered too “big” for the fashion world.
In an effort to fit in and get down to a size zero, she only ate salads without dressing and exercised for four hours a day.
“I was gaunt and very unhealthy,” McGrady, who now lives in New York, tells The Post. “I battled severe depression.”
Eventually, she decided that her dream of becoming a model wasn’t worth it. She got her high-school diploma, found work as a nanny and, finally, let herself eat.
By age 20, she’d transformed from a sickly teenager into a curvaceous woman, with hips, cellulite and even stretch marks. She made a vow that changed everything: She would love her body no matter what. It was a turning point in her career.
At the time, McGrady didn’t know much about plus-size modeling, but she fondly remembered the June 2011 Vogue Italia cover, with three voluptuous women in lingerie sitting seductively at a table set with red wine and pasta.
“I had never seen such a gorgeous cover in my entire life,” she says. “I didn’t know what it was, or what I was seeing, but these girls looked like me.”
Inspired by that image, she mustered the confidence to approach Wilhelmina Models, the same top agency that had once represented her mom. She was signed on the spot, and almost immediately booked jobs at Miami Swim Week in 2013, as well as gigs with big names such as Nordstrom and Forever 21.
Her success was instant, and enormously validating.
“I wasn’t changing my body anymore,” she says. “I wasn’t fighting to be something I wasn’t — and still, I was living my dream.” Then, Sports Illustrated called. She first appeared in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue last year, with a single photo of her wearing nothing but body paint. This year, she’s more prominent, posing in a groundbreaking, black-andwhite series that’s the issue’s homage to the #MeToo movement. She got to choose the words that appear on her skin.
“Confidence,” written down her leg, is a reminder of how far she has come. But “worthy,” scrawled across her chest, is the most meaningful to the young pinup.
It reminds her of the affirmation she’s spoken every morning since those days — now long ago — when she felt so insecure about her body that she would do anything to change it.
“I am beautiful in the skin I’m in,” McGrady tells herself daily. “I am worthy of success and feeling these wonderful things.”