A Sharpie, a Polaroid, and a teenager in a bikini. She still remembers all of it. Tracy Spiridakos won a modeling contest at 17. The meeting that followed ended it.
She had just won a competition, and her brother drove her to the meeting that was supposed to launch everything. It ended with a marker and a list of instructions. The actress says she still sees those marks whenever she looks in a mirror.
Tracy Spiridakos says modeling agents marked her body ‘flaws’ and told her to lose weight
Tracy Spiridakos was 17 when representatives at a modeling agency used a marker on photographs of her and instructed her to slim down. The Chicago P.D. actress described that meeting on Monday’s episode of the I’ve Never Said This Before podcast.
She had won a modeling contest before this happened. One of her brothers accompanied her, and staff there handed her a bikini to change into for pictures.
“I went, I put the bikini on, I came out and they took Polaroid pictures of me and then laid them out in front of me, and took a Sharpie and circled all my body flaws and laid them out and they said, ‘You have to lose weight here, here, and here if you want to do this,'” she shared.
Now 38, she remembers feeling “deflated” and “didn’t really know what to say.” Her brother “got defensive” over what was happening.
Both of them then heard the assessment directly. The agents said, “She’s pretty for guy-meets-girl kind of pretty, but if she wants to make it in this industry, she’s got to lose weight,” according to Spiridakos.
Modeling had excited her, and the remark “was like a gut punch,” she said. She described the firm as “a pretty big agency,” then admitted she could not recall its name.
She and her brother “walked out” of the meeting. He consoled her afterward and said, “You’re not modeling anymore. I’m telling mom you’re done.”
The incident left a lasting impact on her, she admitted.
“It’s funny, because those places on my body that they circled, even now — and it’s been a long time — I still see those things in the mirror,” she explained.
“I see those flaws, even though they’re not flaws, because you’re at such a young age and so impressionable at 17. And I have to tell myself that that is not real. And to just love yourself and to not care,” the “Bates Motel” star continued. Furthermore, she added, “Don’t let anyone tell you how to live in your own body.”
Roughly a year or two passed before her screen debut arrived, an episode of “Supernatural” in 2007. A Saturn Award nomination followed her first major role in the 2012 NBC series “Revolution.” Detective Hailey Upton became hers in 2017 on “Chicago P.D.,” a part she left in 2024 before returning this year as a guest.
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