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Models expose the brutal realities of what goes on behind the lens

BEING a beautiful fashion model can be an ugly business.

“I saw a 16-year-old model almost kill herself,” says Sannie Pedersen, a 27-year-old blond stunner who moved from Denmark to New York in 2012 to strut her stuff on runways. “She ate cotton balls just to survive.”

The drugstore staples expand in the stomach, making you feel full. Eating them is just one of many horrifying tactics models employ to stay thin.

Competition in the fashion world is brutal, and models must go to extreme lengths to get cast in shows. Once they get a spot on the runway, they often have to endure harsh conditions for little to no pay.

“Models go through hell to stay skinny,” says Pedersen, who has walked in numerous shows during past New York Fashion Weeks, another of which kicks off Thursday. Having lived with other catwalkers, she recalls a roommate who popped so many laxatives she had to barricade herself in the bathroom for 12 hours, where she screamed in agony. Pedersen didn’t know whether to knock down the door or call for an ambulance. “I was so scared for her — she was so obsessed with her weight,” says Pedersen. “She wrote down how much water she drank. It’s terrifying.” When Pedersen first got to New York, she was so desperate to get cast that she subsisted on a daily diet of 20 cigarettes, a cup of coffee and little else. The 5-foot-11 stunner weighed just 100 pounds at her lightest in 2012, and it hurt her just to sit down.

“There [wasn’t] enough meat on my bones,” she says.

Now a healthier 121 pounds, according to her model stats, and living with her personaltrainer husband in Forest Hills, Pedersen is often told she is too fat at castings, even though she’s always been a size 0 or 2.

At Fashion Week last September, “one of the designers called me obese,” she says. Another time, she visited a top global agency where a department head was pleased with Pedersen’s look — but the agency’s famous founder was not. “It’s my agency, and I like anorexics,” he hissed in front of her.

Victoire Dauxerre, a 24-year-old French