Sixtine Rouyre: Redefining Beauty Standards with Body Neutrality

Introducing Sixtine Rouyre, the stunning model and social media influencer who is making waves in the modelling industry with her message of body neutrality. Born in Brussels, Belgium, Rouyre relocated to Fort Worth, Texas at a young age where she began her modelling career at just 13 years old. Her unique blend of Psychology, Human Rights, and Politics with a minor in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Studies from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study has equipped her with a breadth of knowledge that she seamlessly incorporates into her advocacy for body positivity.

Rouyre’s modelling career hit a temporary roadblock with the outbreak of COVID-19, but this didn’t stop her from expanding her platform and growing her following on TikTok and Instagram to a combined audience of nearly 900,000. Her campaigns with notable brands like Target, Warby Parker, Ulta, SKIMS, and Aerie are a testament to her popularity and impact in the industry. Now, Rouyre is set to make her mark as the newest rookie for the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, cementing her status as a rising star in the fashion world. With her unwavering message of body neutrality, Rouyre is truly an inspiration for women everywhere.

How did your unique blend of studies from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study inform your message of body neutrality?

My degree was pretty interesting and it’s something I love to talk about. My official concentration was “Hate” and I combined aspects of psychology, human rights and politics. I wanted to know where hate comes from: why do we hate others (or ourselves) and how does that, in turn, affect politics and the minority groups often impacted by those politics?

I sought my answer within my minor- Child and Adolescent Health Studies. Hate is a learned thing, it is not something we are born doing, and the best time to teach a mind is when it’s younger and much more malleable (shoutout to neuroplasticity!). So, while I focused on the political side of this thought in college, I found it easy to apply when I started thinking more about body neutrality and how we are taught to think about our bodies from a young age.

When we are told from a young age that hating your body is normal and that one’s worth is tied to appearance (and thinness!), that message is going to stick with us as we age and our minds become less malleable. And once you’re an adult, it’s a lot harder to go back and change your brain’s neuropathways that tell you that these ideas are true. Anyways, all that to say once I realized just how ingrained body negativity is ingrained in us, in our brains, I was like “ok can we stop normalizing it now because this is what we’re teaching kids and it’s affecting all of us throughout our entire lives.”

So that’s kind of where my message comes from a place of wanting to teach our brains that our bodies don’t need to be some big bad scary thing that we should always want to change. Our bodies can be just that: bodies. A thing that allows us to breathe in that crispy spring air and dance at our favourite bars and eat yummy foods that make us believe in a higher power and laugh with our friends till our abs hurt. We can appreciate it for that without having to attach aesthetic worth to it.

Can you tell us about your journey from a young model in Fort Worth, Texas to a rising star in the fashion industry?

As kids, my sister and I always wanted to get into acting and modelling. We spent hours searching for agencies and programs we could do in our area and begged our mom to sign us up for whatever we could. We would do test shoots and runway classes and even random improv and acting courses. I signed with my first agency, Callidus Agency, in Dallas when I was 14 I think. With them, I booked my first commercial for Bealls Department Store when I was 15, I was so excited! I continued my modelling journey when I was 18 and moved to New York City. While going to school, I kept shooting with whatever photographers I could to get practice and took up side gigs I found on casting networks.

In 2018, I signed with my first agency in NY- MMG- and started working more frequently but my career didn’t really change until the fall of 2019 when I attended Coco Rocha’s Model Camp. There, while learning some of the most amazing tools from Coco about modelling and the industry, I met my mother’s agent Megan (The Model Nexus). Within a month of signing with her, she had placed me with One Management. But just as I started gaining traction and was ready to start modelling full-time, the pandemic hit right as I was graduating college. I bartended for 6 months while I waited for the industry to pick up again and in January of 2021, I moved to LA temporarily to try my luck on the west coast. While living out there, and waiting for an agency to pick me up, I started posting more frequently on TikTok and started my Swimsuit Series.

The rest was history really. I got signed in LA to Freedom Models that April and by the time I moved back to NY in May I was able to quit bartending and pursue modelling/content creation full-time. A year later I signed with Ford Models where I found the most amazing and supporting agents. Fast forward to now(wow time flies!) and I am a 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Rookie and I am over the moon excited. 13-year-old me would have never imagined we made it this far and I just know she’d be jumping up and down if she knew.

With campaigns for notable brands like Target, Warby Parker, and Aerie, how do you choose the brands you work with?

As a model, I’ve been very lucky to have agents who keep my values in mind when booking me on campaigns. Aerie in particular was one of my dream clients since I was in high school because of how impactful their “Real” Campaigns were when no other brand was not photoshopping their models. I love working with brands that value diversity, inclusivity and sustainability and will always prioritize those brands but as a model, I am not always given the choice because at the end of the day, I need to get paid and my agents need to get paid. However, as a content creator, or influencer, I have a much greater say in what brands I get to work with. My mother agent, Model Nexus, is also my social media manager and Megan has been amazing in working with me to ensure we choose brands that prioritize the values that I mentioned above.

You’ve recently been announced as the newest rookie for the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, what does this achievement mean to you?

Being a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Rookie is behind my wildest dreams. I had it on my vision board last year but I think I told myself it was just a silly fun last-minute thing to add, I didn’t think I would actually achieve it so early on in my career! But really, it has been so special to me because it means I’m doing what I always wanted to do. It means I am not just a model with a pretty face, I am a person with a voice and a message and a platform to do it and people actually care about what I have to say. And that’s what this whole journey has always been about for me.

How do you think the fashion industry can do better in promoting body positivity and inclusivity?

While great strides have been made in the industry, thanks to some amazing women, like Ashley Graham, that have come before me, there is still a lot of work to do within the industry. I think it’s most apparent in the high fashion sector of the industry, where in the most recent fashion week less than 5% of models were above a size 4. (https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/what-happened-to-the-plus-size-models.html). That is a long way away from inclusivity if you ask me. Looking at campaigns, you can also tell the brands that are only on the inclusivity bandwagon for the appearance apart from the brands that actually care.

I can always tell when I show up to set and I am the “token” plus size model for the day because for every other model, there is a size 0. In those particular jobs, I am never allowed to look sexy either, no matter the brand. It’s always frumpy clothes and “smiles only!” because god forbid they let the fat girl look sexy next to the skinny girls. I see this a lot with body positivity movements in the industry as well, what I call the “fat and happy” phenomenon because it seems like the industry always wants people in larger bodies to prove that they actually are happy in their bodies.

Sizing is also still an issue in so many brands. The average American woman is a size 16 (according to the US Department of Health and Services), or roughly an XL. So why is it that brands commonly stop there? That means HALF of the population of women are excluded from wearing a lot of brands. What’s up with that? Clearly, there’s still work to be done in this industry.

Can you share any tips for maintaining a positive body image in the face of societal pressures?

I think going back to what I said early about our brains and how we’re taught to hate ourselves is key in moving towards a strong positive body image that doesn’t sway. Once you can understand the “why”, you can start to unlearn some of the behaviours that have been instilled in you from a young age. A big one for me is being naked. I am not kidding, it’s the best form of exposure therapy. Usually, when you hate your body, you avoid it as much as you can and you make it to be a big scary monster in your mind. Seeing it is that constant reminder that you’re not pretty enough, not skinny enough, that you’re supposed to start that diet today, and oh that stretch mark is definitely gross. But when we force ourselves to stare at ourselves naked in the mirror or be naked as often as we can (don’t flash your neighbours too much), then we start teaching our brain that it’s not a big deal, it’s just a body. It takes away the shock factor of it when we’re used to seeing it all the time. So that’s my best tip, get naked! Oh, and also maybe unfollow all of those influencer models that pay thousands of dollars on surgery and still photoshop all their photos to look “perfect” because making ourselves miserable through comparison isn’t helping anyone either.

How do you balance your advocacy for body neutrality with the expectations of the modelling industry?

I think body neutrality has actually allowed me to be better equipped with the expectations of the modelling industry because it’s allowed me to detach myself from my body and any worth attached to it. The industry can be a cruel place and if you aren’t confident and comfortable with yourself it will eat you alive. You need to know when to stand your ground and when to say no I won’t be treated like that because that’s not how you treat a human being. When I am on set, it is my job to make sure my body can pose and move as I need it to efficiently model the clothes. That’s it. It is not my body’s job to fit in clothes that aren’t my size or to lose weight to have the “perfect” measurements or look any sort of way because someone decided that was the beauty standard trend of the moment. So I think practising and advocating for body neutrality has made me a stronger model and I won’t apologize for it for brands who think it makes me difficult to work with.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of using your platform to inspire other women to love their bodies?

The most rewarding aspect of my platform is hearing women telling me how much I have helped them in their own journeys with their bodies. I read every single comment and every single message I have ever received so I see it all and it makes it so worth it. I could receive 50x of the hate comments I do now and it would still be worth it. If I can just get one woman to realize she doesn’t have to hate herself and that life is so much more enjoyable when your worth is not attached to your looks, then it’s all worth it.

How did the outbreak of COVID-19 impact your modelling career, and how did you pivot during this time?

I talked about this earlier but covid-19 is ultimately what got me on TikTok and eventually what got me posting out of sheer boredom. For the swimsuit series in particular, I thought a lot about the women who had just spent the last year in their homes and were intimidated by the upcoming summer of 2021 and the thought of wearing a swimsuit in public. So in my own search for a flattering swimsuit, I wanted to show that a bikini body didn’t need to be a particular size or shape to be a bikini body, you just needed the right bikini. With the pandemic also came a lot of conversations about weight, as many of us weren’t moving or exercising as much as we maybe would’ve in our pre-covid lives. And that was also a conversation that needed to be had: weight gain during such a traumatic time is totally ok and normal and not at all something that needed to be shameful about. I found TikTok was the best way to talk about these things at the time and to assure other women they weren’t alone in their experiences. And thus my career as a TikToker began!

What’s next for you in terms of your modelling career and advocacy work for body neutrality?

To be honest, I have no idea. Becoming a Sports Illustrated Swim Rookie at the age of 25 has shattered some of my highest goals and aspirations for modelling so I am still not quite sure where to go from here. I obviously want to continue using my platform to advocate for body neutrality and I hope as it grows I am able to reach more women. I’d also like to start doing more advocacy and charity work in other sectors that relate to my college degree now that I have the time and resources to do so more effectively.

Sixtine Rouyre’s Holiday Rules

Favourite travel destination?

Anywhere in Italy! I spent 4 weeks travelling the country last summer and I would go back a million times. Sorrento was my favourite.

What 3 items are always in your carry-on?

A book, my Hydroflash, and a huge tube of Aquaphor.

Tips for healthy skin while on the road?

HYDRATE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Literally, nothing else matters if you aren’t drinking enough water! Writing this as a reminder to myself to chug water on the plane that I am currently on.

What’s your go-to airport style?

Matching sweatsuit all the way

How do you stay healthy while travelling?

Plenty of rest, constant hydration, and allow me grace when needed. Travel can be so stressful both physically and mentally and stress is the absolute worse thing you can do to your body. So I try not to overbook myself so I have enough time to sleep and relax and I give myself wiggle room on plans so if things don’t go according to plan I have an alternative or a way out. By giving myself grace I mean when it comes to food and indulgence.

Travelling is meant to be fun and a time to try new foods and experiences so I don’t limit myself when it comes to that. Feeling crippling guilt over the daily gelato cones I had on my trip to Rome is much more “unhealthy” than the cones themselves so I don’t let myself stress over the little things like my diet.

What’s your favourite hotel?

I don’t have one! I generally prefer finding local boutique hotels or unique Airbnb/homestays.

How do you explore the local fashion scene while travelling?

People watching! I love sitting at a cafe and watching people walking by to see what they’re wearing. Styles vary so much by country so it’s always fun to see the comparison in style choices.

Most unexpected fashion/beauty discovery while travelling?

French skincare. It’s so cheap and SO GOOD. I always stock up when I go

What’s a destination on your travel bucket list and why?

Anywhere in South America! I’ve never been and it’s the next continent I want to explore!

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