Earlier this month, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue revealed the finalists of their open-casting model search: Allie Ayers, Olivia Jordan, Iyonna Fairbanks, Camille Kostek, Haley Kalil and Tabria Majors.
More than 5,000 bikini babes applied, and these finalists will be shooting beachside in Belize this month for the mag’s 2018 Swimsuit Issue.
But, even though only one lovely lady will win her own spread in the 2019 issue, there was no cattiness at their Post photo shoot because they bonded over one career woe: Agents have told them all that they weren’t thin enough to make it big.
“We have become a little sisterhood,” Camille Kostek tells The Post. “We all have the same mission — to showcase women of all colors and sizes.”
Haley Kalil, 25
Brian Zak | Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for SWIMMIAMI
This gorgeous redhead has a few different titles to her name. Kalil was crowned Miss Minnesota in 2014, graduated with honors in biomedical sciences from St. Cloud State University that same year, and went on to work as a lab tech.
“I love encouraging women to pursue careers in science,” Kalil, who’s from Excelsior, Minn., tells The Post. Though she eventually wants to return to school to become a physician’s assistant, she says she felt “boxed in” working in a lab. In 2016, she decided to harness her fashion chops and now works as a bridal consultant in Charlotte, NC.
She used to be most famous for marrying Carolina Panthers offensive tackle Matt Kalil in 2015, but now he’s the one playing the supportive spouse for his rising-star wife. “He’s been there with me every step of the way,” Kalil says. “He even helped me put together outfits for this press tour — he says he’s my stylist.”
Olivia Jordan, 29
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In a parallel universe, Jordan envisions finding her Zen. “My aspirational self would be a yoga teacher that teaches on the beach, and that’s all I’d need in the world,” Jordan, who’s based in LA, tells The Post. “But I’m not calm enough for that.”
Indeed, the Tulsa, Okla., native has no plans of slowing down soon. In 2015, she was crowned Miss USA and is currently pursuing an acting career, having already appeared in films such as “Hot Tub Time Machine 2,” as well as Lifetime’s TV show “Unreal.”
The blue-eyed beauty also says she’s done some foot-modeling gigs on the side. “My feet are my favorite part of my body,” Jordan says. “[They’re] also a source of good energy. When I tell my feet they look great, the rest of my body feels great, too.”
Trying these different career paths has taught her to love herself: “Confidence is a side effect of always putting yourself out there,” she says.
Tabria Majors, 27
Brian Zak | Tabria Majors
Majors had no desire to be a model until an agency scouted her on Instagram in 2014. When she left her nine-to-five job as a movie production assistant in LA to pursue modeling full-time in 2015, she took on a side gig as a maid to support her new career.
“Modeling is an expensive career when you first start — you have to invest in yourself and pay for photo shoots and maintain your appearance,” Majors, who’s from Nashville, Tenn., tells The Post.
“When I told people at modeling jobs that I was working as a maid they looked at me with disgust.”
But her hard work has paid off.
Majors cleaned her last home a year ago, and now she shoots for brands such as Forever 21 and is producing a podcast called “The Thick,” in which she talks about her experiences being a plus-size woman of color and interviews other women about body confidence.
Allie Ayers, 23
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When Ayers was growing up, she saw modeling as a way to escape the small-town doldrums of Oklahoma City. “It’s stereotypical, but I wanted to see my name in lights,” Ayers tells The Post.
The pressure to be thin took a toll on the spunky Ayers, who says her waist and hip measurements turned agents off, and she quit modeling to enroll in college at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, where she earned her degree in health sciences.
Her father, a real estate investor, taught her how to flip houses to make money on the side, and also how to work with her hands.
“I learned how to purchase a house, and I stained my own floors — it was a really good learning experience,” she says.
Now that she’s back on the fashion scene, she’s hard at work developing her own size-inclusive swimsuit line set to launch early next year.
“I’ve just been sitting at a sewing machine for hours,” she says. “After modeling, this is my biggest priority.”
Camille Kostek, 25
Brian Zak
As a young girl, Kostek always wanted to be in front of the camera, but she thought that there wasn’t a place for her in the modeling world. “I idolized Victoria’s Secret models, but when I would walk the runway, my legs weren’t as tall or thin as those women,” Kostek, who’s from Killingworth, Conn., tells The Post.
Becoming a New England Patriots cheerleader in 2013 helped her appreciate her strong, toned legs.
“You perform for hours in front of 70,000 fans weekly in a two-piece uniform,” Kostek says. “Confidence is an essential quality of being a successful cheerleader.”
She also gives a shout-out to Ashley Graham, the first plus-sized model to appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2016. “Seeing her made me realize there’s a place in the modeling industry for me, too,” she says.
Iyonna Fairbanks, 25
Brian Zak | Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for SWIMMIAMI
Even though Fairbanks is now a security guard at a chemical plant, she didn’t always know how to defend herself.
As a kid in Cincinnati, her classmates made fun of her because she had dreadlocks. “They’d say I had snakes in my head,” Fairbanks says.
And when she first got into modeling in her teens, an agent told her that she had to cut her hair short.
“It made me cry,” Fairbanks says. “But my mom has always been in my corner — she says hair can grow back, and to not beat myself up over it.”
But now, she says, she’s learned how to embrace her natural texture. And as a red belt in tae kwon do, she knows how to stand up for herself.
She hopes to use SI’s platform to inspire other women who look like her. “[Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue] is embracing diversity like no other, and I want to be a part of it,” she says.
Source: NewYork Post
