Robyn Lawley talks never quitting sugar and her genius budget beauty trick.

Image: Getty.

Robyn Lawley is one of Australia’s hottest exports. She’s a model, foodie (her cookbook Robyn Lawley Eats is incredible), Fruit Juice Australia ambassador, environmental campaigner and food blogger.

Robyn’s made waves around the world for condemning society’s obsession with the “thigh gap” (she appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk about it) and the label “plus size” when it comes to models who don’t fit in the one-size-fits-all basket. We caught up with the 26-year-old to talk about her treatment in her early modelling days and her best beauty trick.

If Ripley [Robyn’s five-month-old daughter] turns around to you when she’s older and says, ‘Mum, I want to be a model’, what advice would you give her?

“If she wants to model, she can model. Obviously I’d wait until she was a certain age to do the catwalks; that’s an appropriate thing because there’s all kinds of craziness backstage. I remember one photographer telling me, ‘I’ve seen it all’ – he was trying to take my photo while I was getting changed. And I was like, ‘You’ve seen it all? OK.’ So many times I’ve been completely naked and people are coming in [while changing] and I’ve been like, “Who the frick are you? Get out of here!” I was 20 in New York and by myself.

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What was your reaction to him at the time?

“He kept trying to take photos of me changing and luckily one of the stylists stepped in and told him he needed to go. I felt like a piece of meat and I hated that feeling – I just tuned out to it. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s not nice’. You often can feel like a piece of property when you’re a model which is a bit shit but that’s the way it is.”

How would you feel if your daughter had the experience you did?

“I would be with Ripley to tell someone to get the f*ck out if they tried to do that to her.” (Post continues after gallery.)

Starting out you weren’t a stick-thin model in an industry that was very conservative, what was that like?

“It was like pulling teeth occasionally. With ‘plus size’ models, when you go to castings you almost have to do yourself up so they can envision you in their campaign. Whereas, regular models just have to go as they are without any makeup.

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“So you had to put this vision into people’s heads that you’d be a good model. It was hard for me — UK sizing is smaller, so I was over a UK size 16, so I had to fit back down into clothes. I was so happy to be overseas, I had been promised it for so long and it always kept falling through because I was trying to model as someone with a different size to the norm, so finally getting there and modelling in England and New York was a lot of fun.”

What’s your best budget beauty tip?

“Use extra virgin raw coconut oil – or olive oil – as a makeup remover. It’s super cheap. I use it in the shower. So if I’m ever without face wash I just go to the kitchen and grab some oil. It’s the best thing to take off eyelash glue, it’s the far easiest thing to use. Put a hot towel over your face and you’re done in two seconds.”

Sarah Wilson’s book I Quit Sugar is a bestseller and there are Paleo enthusiasts telling us to quit almost everything. What’s your take on these trends?

“Good luck to you; when you quit food groups you go crazy. Well, that’s what happened to me. If I quit a food group I just have to have it in a big, crazy-ass feast. You just can't sustain denying yourself and making yourself feel guilty about something every single day. I mean it’s like fruit. Fruit is fruit. Mother nature grew it. You pick it, you eat it. It’s very simple and I just think we’re getting really over-complicated and elaborate with all these diets and what you should and shouldn’t eat.”

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Could you ever quit sugar yourself?

"No, you kidding me? No. Especially not fruit. Fruit is natural sugar no I’m not going to quit that, I think it’s ridiculous to quit, and, you know, that’s my opinion, I haven't read any of that stuff but I like fruit and I’m not going to quit it."

In the past, you’ve spoken about disliking your body, why was that?  

“I had people tap me on the head and say, ‘If only you were a little shorter’, or, ‘If only you would fit the clothes a bit better'. Internally I used to go, ‘Oh, well that’s because of me, I ruined everything’ and that’s how negativity starts. I was 16 and to be told that I’m too tall or too 'this', I’m photogenic but I can’t fit the clothing, was difficult.

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"I was very practical, in a way. I thought, ‘OK, yep, I understand that’s because of that reason. I never thought I could actually make it work'. I was just focusing on maybe doing hosting or TV or something. One day I went to a casting and they said, 'You’re not right for this but you’re right for that', and that’s how I started plus-size modelling.”

How can women feel good about their bodies when there are all these negative messages out there?

"Just focus on hobbies. That’s the quickest and best way to get over that feeling. I know that feeling well. Make yourself smarter and do hobbies. I got into cooking craziness, I got into DJing — things that made me feel good because I was smart to do them. I think that it’s a huge problem in today’s society — women focus so much on their looks but we’ve got to focus on equality or we’ve got to focus on intelligence and I’m trying to do that, that’s more important to me now."

What’s the pinky-peach lipgloss we always spot you wearing?

"Usually it’s an old Spice lip liner by MAC. That’s how all the nineties supermodels lined their lips. You fill your lips in and then put a gloss over it and you’re ready to go.”