Think all models starve and abuse their bodies to be thin? Yes, many do, but Alek Wek is different.

It was a command most fashion models dread. “’Don’t freak out, but they want you to lose five lbs.,’” Alek Wek’s agent told her one day. Her response?

“I was like, ‘I don’t think so,’” says the 5′11″, then 135-lb.Wek. “You’re not going to nourish your body for what, a picture? The whole weight thing is so ridiculous.” Her impatience is not surprising in light of her life story.

Raised in Sudan, Wek and her family were forced to flee their hometown of Wau in 1985 when civil war tore apart the country. Hiding out in remote villages, “we had nothing — you didn’t know where the next meal was coming from,” she recalls.

Eventually she escaped to England, where she was literally discovered on the street, then soared to the top of her profession in the late ’90s, walking runways for Chanel and Dior and landing the cover of Elle. [via]