A turning point came when Peru’s friend signed them up to walk in the annual Ilkley Macmillan Fashion Show, which was something out of her comfort zone.<\/p>\n
“After several gin and tonics, I went on stage and I absolutely loved it,” Peru admits.<\/p>\n
“I used to do drama when I was younger and I had that same buzz waiting to go on stage that I used to have and love. <\/p>\n
“It just lit something up in me and I came off walking taller and I felt so much better about myself.”<\/p>\n
For the next six years, Peru continued to volunteer at the show until she decided to take it a step further. <\/p>\n
“There was actually a couple of professional models involved in that show and they were the ones that said to me, I really think that you’ve taken to this, you should try it,” Peru recalls.<\/p>\n
“I thought, if I give it a go and I get something local to Leeds, it’d be a nice hobby.<\/p>\n
“So I sent off really basic images across the country and I got signed with a London agency straight away.”<\/p>\n
Peru expected to get a couple of lifestyle jobs through her agency but was terrified to learn she was wanted for swimwear and lingerie campaigns. <\/p>\n
“My first big job in my first year of modelling, I ended up in the Bahamas for a week alongside Ashley Graham and Lizzo,” she says.<\/p>\n
“That was a life-turning point for me because being surrounded by women that are naturally so self-confident in their body and so self-assured had a knock-on effect and it made a big impact on my mental well-being.”<\/p>\n
That feeling and the response from other women set Peru down a different path of “body acceptance”. <\/p>\n
“I am happy enough because I know it’s an amazing vessel to make sure that I can do all the things that I’m doing and I’m loving life, so I’m grateful for it and I don’t pick fault with it,” she says.<\/p>\n
To tackle the lack of representation in the fashion industry, Peru teamed up with her friend Tina Boden to do workshops with women. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A turning point came when Peru’s friend signed them up to walk in the annual Ilkley Macmillan Fashion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-690849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}