How Rebekah Marine has changed the face of Fashion Week

Where be­ing a size 4 is called body in­clus­ive, the mod­el­ing/fash­ion in­dustry isn’t ex­actly the most pro­gress­ive when it comes to pos­it­ive body im­ages. With­in that con­text, Re­bekah Mar­ine’s story is pretty im­press­ive. Hav­ing been born without a fore­arm and hand, Mar­ine has found her­self today gra­cing run­ways and fash­ion shoots. But it wasn’t al­ways so ef­fort­lessly easy to look chic with a bion­ic arm. Which makes her story all the more in­spir­ing and re­lat­able.

Mar­ine grew up in Glass­boro and re­mains a South Jer­sey girl. She says her child­hood was just what you would ex­pect any up­bring­ing to be. She didn’t see her­self as dif­fer­ent and her par­ents al­ways made sure to push her to do things, even if they were out of her com­fort zone. "I was nev­er really picked on by any means, oth­er than the nor­mal teas­ing you just get throughout high school that every­one goes through. I had a really great child­hood, had great friends, I played tee ball as a kid. My par­ents made it clear that if I ever needed help I just had to ask, but they didn’t want oth­er people to kinda come to me and help. They wanted me to fig­ure out on my own." Grow­ing up, Mar­ine chose not to use a pros­thet­ic hand, say­ing she al­ways felt that she did bet­ter without it.

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Hav­ing a nat­ur­al love for be­ing in front of the cam­era from an early age, Mar­ine went to New York City with her moth­er when she was 13, to meet with agen­cies in the hopes of ob­tain­ing mod­el­ing gigs. "They told me I wouldn’t have a ca­reer, it was just not pos­sible. That’s when I came to real­ize I was dif­fer­ent." Mar­ine says that was the start of many years of wrest­ling with her phys­ic­al dif­fer­ence. Her teen years were filled with self-doubt. "Any sort of re­jec­tion, I thought it was all be­cause of my arm. When I was picked last in vol­ley­ball, I thought it was be­cause of my arm. It just be­came this huge in­sec­ur­ity of mine and it was really just all in my head. Nobody really treated me dif­fer­ently, it was just me be­ing hard on my­self."

After high school, she at­ten­ded Row­an Uni­versity and gradu­ated with a de­gree in ad­vert­ising, which she now pur­sues in her ca­reer full time. So how did she de­cide to give mod­el­ing an­oth­er try? That began about six years ago Mar­ine says, just for fun. "It was just something to build my own con­fid­ence and get out this in­sec­ur­ity that I had about my­self. And it really just grew and now people all over the world know about me and it’s really crazy." In­ter­na­tion­ally fam­ous is cor­rect. She’s been pro­filed in Time and People and boasts tens of thou­sands of so­cial me­dia fol­low­ers. Mar­ine says even though her dis­ab­il­ity may be unique, her story can eas­ily res­on­ate with most people. "We are all so crit­ic­al of ourselves. I was al­ways so crit­ic­al of my­self and so hard on my­self. It wasn’t un­til my early 20s that I star­ted to real­ize that I can’t live this way."

Her ini­tial for­ay in­to mod­el­ing was some­what of a fluke, this time in­spired by her phys­ic­al dif­fer­ence. "It was when I ac­tu­ally first star­ted to get the pros­thet­ic arm. I was telling a friend about the pro­cess of get­ting the arm and he was like ‘you know, you should really mod­el it, and maybe one day be a spokes­per­son for that com­pany or maybe start your own found­a­tion, and be something pos­it­ive from it.’ And that’s when it kind of clicked to me, like maybe I have something here big­ger in my life that I’m sup­posed to be do­ing." One small photo shoot Mar­ine ar­ranged with a loc­al pho­to­graph­er, with her pos­ing with her new pros­thet­ic arm led to much big­ger things. Big­ger things such as mod­el­ing for Nord­strom’s 2015 an­niversary cata­log and walk­ing in New York Fash­ion Week, three times now. In fact, when she talked to PW, Mar­ine had just re­turned from mod­el­ing at New York Fash­ion Week for this year. This time was es­pe­cially sig­ni­fic­ant for her, she said. "I walked the run­way with a 6-year-old little girl who was also born the same way I was. And I met her a couple years ago, and I asked her mom ‘would she want to walk in Fash­ion Week with me?’ and she’s su­per sassy and really in­to fash­ion so she was like ‘ab­so­lutely.’ It was kind of sym­bol­ic of open­ing doors for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to come.

Mar­ine says in her opin­ion, every­one should be able to mod­el. "We are all so unique and I think the biggest chal­lenge for me in the in­dustry is not my arm any­more, it’s my height. Be­cause I am not 5’9", I’m ac­tu­ally 5’3", so I’m very very short for run­away. I think that’s an­oth­er chal­lenge that the fash­ion in­dustry needs to take a look at, like you don’t have to be 5’9" to mod­el. There should be mod­els of all shapes and sizes, and ages too."

Out­side of work and mod­el­ing, Mar­ine stays busy with her char­it­able en­deavors. Be­ing a self-de­scribed "huge hockey fan," she’s be­gun work with the Ed Snyder Hockey Found­a­tion. (Fa­vor­ite play­er is Wayne Sim­monds if you’re won­der­ing) Here, she’ll speak with the girls hockey club. "I’m just try­ing to get in­volved in Philly, in all as­pects, it doesn’t have to be fash­ion."

She’s also re­mained act­ively in­volved in the Lucky Fin Pro­ject, a non-profit or­gan­iz­a­tion that sup­ports those with up­per limb dif­fer­ences. "The mod­el­ing thing is great and all but be­ing the ment­or of a kid is what really makes me feel like I’m do­ing something good." Mar­ine adds that she nev­er had such role mod­els grow­ing up. "I nev­er had any­body older to ask ques­tions, ask how to do my hair or paint my nails. I nev­er had that, so to be able to be on the oth­er side now is huge. I get to fi­nally to give some little hope, and hope­fully they won’t have to deal with the in­sec­ur­it­ies that I went through when I was a teen­ager."

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