February 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kylie Bisutti beat 10,000 contenders to become a Victoria Secret model, but now she’s walking away from her dream job, vowing to reserve her body for her husband.
Bisutti credited her Christian faith with helping her to come to her decision in an interview this week on Good Morning America.
“Growing in my relationship with the Lord, and my faith, I’m a strong believing Christian, I just became so convicted about wanting to honor my husband with my body and wanting to be a role model for other women out there who look up to me,” she said.
The California native was newly married to her husband, Mike, when she entered a Victoria Secret model search in 2009, determined to win.
“I want this, and I’ll do what it takes to get it,” she had vowed. But after two years working for the notorious lingerie company, a comment from her eight-year-old cousin sparked a dramatic turn-around.
“I was doing my make-up in the mirror one day, and she was watching me,” Bisutti recalled. “She just looked at me and she was like, ‘I think I want to stop eating so I can look like you. And it just broke my heart, because she looks up to me.”
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Now, Bisutti is using the unexpected flood of media attention to encourage young women to reject some of the false messages that she fears she was sending in her previous line of work. Beauty is “a heart issue,” rather than an “outer issue,” she says.
“I didn’t really want to be that kind of role model for younger girls because I had a lot of younger Christian girls that were looking up to me and then thinking that it was okay for them to walk around and show their bodies in lingerie to guys,” she told FOX411.
Fellow Christian model Shannon Stewart praised Bisutti’s decision in a blog post yesterday.
“She is one rare girl,” Stewart wrote. “In a society where sex sells, and is just plain everywhere, you can still find those that are a diamond in the rough, and that are not willing to succumb to the pressures of ‘Hollywood.’”
Bisutti is now hoping to pursue a lingerie-free modeling career similar to Stewart’s, and she says she’s thankful for her husband’s support in bringing her to this point.
“He was so supportive of me, and I am so thankful that he let me grow and let me come to this decision on my own,” she told Good Morning America, adding that he’s “very thankful” about her decision.