Carre Otis was among the world's top super models for 17 years, beginning her career at the age of 14. To prepare for each photo shoot, she routinely binged and purged, took laxatives and diet pills, and exercised intensely. Being extremely thin made possible a modeling career that earned her $20,000 a day. Cocaine helped her to diet, and she used heroine later on in her career. She married actor Mickey Rourke, but they soon divorced. This destructive lifestyle led to a mental and emotional breakdown.

After treatment at a mental institution, she emerged committed to changing her life. She began eating normally and abstaining from all drugs and alcohol. She gained 30 pounds, went from a size 2 to a size 12, and is now successful as a "plus size" model.

Last year, on her 32nd birthday, a friend invited her on a humanitarian mission to distribute clothes and toys to kids living in orphanages in Nepal. For the first time she saw what starvation really was. Looking back on her experience, she explained to reporter Cynthia McFadden:

It wasn't about somebody being concerned that they were going to fit into a size, and that's why they weren't eating. It was because there wasn't food to be had. There was no money to get food. . ..I thought, You know what? This is how the rest of the world lives.

If somebody asked me, "When did you feel the most beautiful?" I would say, when I was traveling through the Himalayas in dirty clothes, dirty hair, hadn't had a shower in a week, and was giving kids clothes. That's when I felt like the most beautiful woman, and the woman I've always aspired to be.