Standing at the door to Mary Victor’s apartment, you rap your knuckles against the polished wood. Nervousness floods your veins as you prepare to conduct a rather prying interview with the young woman herself.
Swinging open the door, she welcomes you with a bright smile and immediately pulls you into a warm embrace that smells of sweet cinnamon and vanilla. Returning the hug, you wonder how anyone could wish harm to such a sweet and bubbly character.
Having been bullied for her size and skin colour, suicide was a never-ending soundtrack that played on Victor’s mind. Now at 24, Victor is a plus-size model, celebrity makeup artist and the proud founder of the body neutrality movement #TheBodyWithin.
Although her initiatives have seen a significant shift in society, her traumatic past still haunts her to this day.
The body neutrality advocate was merely 11 years old when the bullying began. Her school was a battleground, biting remarks were the choice of weapon and Victor was a lone soldier without any defence.
“You have a small head and such a big body!”, “You look like a man.” and “If you lost weight, you’d be prettier!” were metaphorical bullets fired at her daily, leaving real scars.
“I was not the kind to stand up for myself. When anything happened, my solution was to keep quiet and go home to cry,” she admits.
Consumed with self-doubt, she spiralled into a self-destructive lifestyle, her grades suffering along with her mental health.
“I would go to stores and squeeze myself into clothes that didn’t fit, starve myself, cut my wrists,” she says.
“I forced myself to puke after meals, took dieting supplements that led to food poisoning and even consumed medication to attempt suicide.”
In her frenzy to lose weight, Victor would exercise excruciatingly for two to three hours a day, with only one meal of chicken, brown rice and broccoli, to sustain her. Despite years of exertion and extreme dieting, Victor found herself unable to shed any kilos at 70 kg.
Meanwhile, her family only added to her plight, pressuring her to get slimmer and rarely offering any support. Later on, she was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Fearing that it would worsen her situation, Victor kept her mental illness to herself.
“I was so far down the rabbit hole that it was normal for me to think about killing myself every day,” she recalls, eyes cloudy with the ghosts of her past.
“I was actually excited by the possibility of death. I would think: 'If I take that knife out of the drawer and silt my wrist, that may relieve some of my pain.’”
Noticing her troubled demeanour, you mumble an apology for having her recall such traumatic events, to which she responds: “No, it’s okay! It needs to be shared.”
Oddly enough, it was green eyeshadow that changed Victor’s life. The euphoria that she experienced upon applying makeup for the first time was unlike anything she had ever felt before.
Every stroke of foundation, flick of mascara and swipe of lipstick seemed to pull 16-year-old Victor away from reality and into her own little world of artistry. It was instant therapy.
Slowly, balance returned to her life and Victor was able to adjust to a healthier lifestyle, her confidence blossoming with every compliment earned for her makeup skills.
After building up her portfolio at Cosmoprof Academy makeup school, Victor began doing makeup for celebrities and models.
“For the first time in real life, I got to watch women who were truly confident,” she says. Inspired by their self-assurance, Victor’s interest in modelling grew.
However, a few clicks on the internet led her to a disappointing reality —
the lack of plus-size models in Singapore. The gaping hole in representation was made more evident when Victor looked to the United States, where models of various colours, shapes and sizes flooded social media.
With no proper movement in Singapore to advocate for body positivity in women, Victor took matters into her own hands and started #TheBodyWithin in 2019.
Modelling for the first time, Victor joined hands with a photographer friend to create a series of campaign photos that portrayed her journey towards self-acceptance.
As she posed for the camera, swathed in a pale fabric on the cool sand of Coney Island, fear and even uncertainty set in.
“I didn’t know how I would look on camera, I didn’t know what to do and I was worried about how people would react when we released the photos on Instagram,” she shares.
“It scared the hell out of me, but I knew that it had to be done because plus-size women are so under-represented in Singapore.”
Predictably, Victor’s initiative was met with backlash, with some individuals misunderstanding the movement as promoting obesity.
“Initially, the comments really hurt me. But a while later I realised: ‘Holy shit, I have haters!’” she says, her boisterous laugh like sunshine against the dim lighting of the fading afternoon.
Motivated to build a supportive community of diverse women, Victor pushed forward with #TheBodyWithin.
The advocate reached out to media publications like The New Paper, Her World, Cleo, Zula and more, encouraging them to share her story for the benefit of women across the country. Victor also approached local fashion labels like Baliza and Zerrin in hopes to model for them, which led the boutiques to roll out more options for plus-size women. She even began an IG Live miniseries entitled Body Talk last year, where she sat with different women to listen to their body journey.
Despite her young age, Victor speaks with the wisdom of an individual who has braved a long and tumultuous journey fraught with trauma and setbacks.
“There are girls as young as eight who come up to me and tell me that they hate their body,” she says.
“They’re thinking the same things as I did, spending their young lives focusing on their bodies and nothing else, thinking about what they could do to not feel the pain anymore.
“Twenty per cent of them might actually end up killing themselves because of bullying.”
Fortunately, word has been spreading of #TheBodyWithin, and Victor has been meeting with polytechnic and university students to advise them on their body-image related projects.
“These are the young women who are going to mould the future, the audience I’ve been targeting this whole time,” she says, hope returning to her voice.
“In turn, they will be educating so many other girls, and to have them come to me for guidance is an honour.”
Despite her success, Mary’s recovery process is not smooth sailing. Some days, thoughts of suicide still visit her, settling in like unwelcomed guests in her mind.
“I still have bad days, some extremely terrible, but through daily meditation, I now have a healthy enough mindset to recognise my feelings, accept my body and not put pressure on myself,” she says.
“Self-acceptance is not a destination, just like life, it’s a journey.”
As you get up to leave, Victor wraps you in another warm hug, squeezing tightly. As you melt into her embrace, you realise that this has been her goal all along – to help people feel loved, accepted and comfortable with who they are through genuine conversations like the one you had just shared.
Standing at the entrance to Mary Victor’s apartment, you close the polished wooden door behind you. The nervousness leaves your veins as you prepare to write up the inspiring story of the young woman herself.