Beauty and the Cross

September/October 2008 Issue | Posted by Father Ernest Daly, LC in Features

By Father Ernest Daly, LC

When Leah Darrow appeared as a contestant on the hit reality TV show “America’s Next Top Model,” she says, “My eyes were dramatically opened to the pitfall of today’s desire to be the next ‘beautiful thing.’”

Yet, when she was eliminated on the TV show, she wanted to capitalize on her fame while she could. She made the fateful decision to move to New York, leaving her family in St. Louis. Her family had seen her through a lot, and introduced her to Christ’s love for her — and the cross.

She was born in 1979 in Norman, Okla., the oldest of six children raised on the family’s farm and sent to Catholic school.

When she was 12 her grandfather was murdered. Her parents immediately brought the whole family to Mass.

That Mass was a watershed event in her life. Evil was suddenly very real for her. It could touch her. It could even destroy the people she loved most. She felt lost, confused, and very scared. Yet there in Mass, as she looked at Jesus on the cross, she experienced a sudden awareness of his unconditional love. He was there in her pain and sorrow. She was not alone. Her family was not alone. He would not abandon them. He was their strength. “There, looking at Christ on the cross,” she says, “that’s where I felt ‘home.’”

Three years later, a job change brought her father and the family to St. Louis to start over again. She faced city life with confidence in her new knowledge that God was there for her, no matter what.

For college, she attended the University of Missouri-St. Louis. There, she was chapter president of Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in Psychology, and earned her B.A. in psychology with magna cum laude honors.

But, ever since she had been a young girl, and during her teenage years, Leah had been approached by fashion agents. Her tall, slim figure was just what the designers were looking for. In college, Leah began to model professionally, and found success. Soon she was doing commercials for television, photo shoots for local companies, and getting attention.

In 2004, she got her big chance. She was accepted as a contestant on “Amer­ ica’s Next Top Model.” She spent the next six months doing photo shoots in Los Angeles, New York, and Jamaica — and living the social life of the high-powered modeling world.

After being eliminated from the show in 2005, she received contract offers from top modeling companies such as Ford and Elite Modeling, but the conditions of the contracts were troublesome. She decided not to sign a contract, and instead went independent. Soon she had many offers.

Yet something else was going on in her soul. She was feeling a weight of sorrow. There were relationships and other elements of her life that were not right. There was a value being given to her body that seemed to make her soul worthless and irrelevant.

“I remembered that experience of the cross when I was 12,” she says. “I had experienced Christ’s sorrow, but also his love. Now I was feeling ‘the worldly sorrow of Christ,’ his sorrow for my soul.”

But she also had a career to attend to, and where was it leading her?

“I knew some things I was doing were wrong, but I did not know why,” she says.

“I was even going to confession, but there were some things that I had never said. It was like my life was a desk that was in disorder. I was trying to put things in order on my desk, but there was one pile of trash on the desk that I was still too scared to deal with. I began to pray, ‘God, I don’t know if you can handle this, but please help me.’”

And his help came in an unforgettable way. “One day I found myself in the midst of a high-powered photoshoot,” she says, “where the outfit I was modeling was anything but modest.

“I had to sit there and think about the responsibility I had, as a model, to myself, my family, the world, and most importantly to God.”

As the photographer snapped picture after picture, her mind was racing. “What if this is my last moment on earth?” she thought. “What if my life ends right here and now? This is what I would be holding in my hands as I faced God.”

The thought gave her pause.

“I knew that Jesus deserved a lot more than what I was offering at that time, because I was worth a lot more than what the world was offering to me. He had given his whole life, body and soul, for me, for everyone. Wasn’t he at least worth mine?”

She cut off the photo session, walked out, and went to her parish church in Brooklyn. She knelt and looked again at Christ on the cross. She had to put her life right with him.

“I walked into the confessional and placed all of my past in the merciful hands of Christ. Once again, I experienced his powerful love. In fact, I experienced it like never before. I felt made new in his love.”

It was Lent. She decided to start attending daily Mass.

A few days later, she made a difficult phone call, to St. Louis.

“Dad,” she said, “I think it’s time I came home.”

He left immediately, driving all the way to New York to bring her home where “My family welcomed me with open arms and unconditional love.”

Back in St. Louis, she still modeled, but gave more time to her career in neuropsychological assessment. She began to volunteer as a youth minister in her parish, and then one day she saw something on TV that caught her attention.

EWTN was featuring a few clips from Pure Fashion, a modeling program for teen girls. Leah was fascinated.

“I wondered why those cute girls and adorable outfits were being showcased on the Catholic channel,” she says. She checked Pure Fashion’s website and wrote to its national director, Brenda Sharman.

“Little did I know what one small email can do,” she says. Sharman called her personally. The two talked for hours, though Leah said it seemed like 20 minutes.

Pure Fashion is an international faith-based program affiliated with Regnum Christi and the Legionaries of Christ designed for girls ages 14 to 18. It helps young women discover their deepest beauty: that of being images of God’s love. It affirms their innate value and authentic femininity.

The program includes training in fashion, runway style, and personal presentation, as well as experiences in service projects, in which the girls have a chance to let charity and joy shine powerfully through them. The girls are reminded that at every moment they are walking advertisements of real beauty.

Pure Fashion girls have become the un­ disputed poster girls of the modesty movement. Articles have appeared in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and on television programs such as “Good Morn­ ing Amer­ ica,” the “Dr. Phil Show,” and “MSNBC.”

This year, Leah helped to put together the first St. Louis Pure Fashion team.

What are Leah’s future plans?

“My dreams in life are quite simple,” she says. “I do not want to be a ‘good Catholic.’ I want more. I want to be a saint. I want to go to heaven. Period. End of story. Whatever will get me there is what I will do.”

Legionary Father Ernest Daly is editor of Our Faith in Action, a current events

program for Catholic teens. OurFaithInAction.com

“I have three fashion inspirations,” says Leah ...

1. The Blessed Mother. “She is the purest definition of a woman of grace and dignity.”

2. Audrey Hepburn. “She always kept an image of modesty with her clothing, never less than respectable.”

3. Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis. “Jackie’s style has never gone out of style.”

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