By Mark Gray
8:32am PST, Jan 18, 2024
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During the height of her modeling career, Beverly Johnson got rail-thin by taking drugs and restricting her caloric intake, she's revealed in a new interview.
While speaking to Page Six in January 2024, the runway icon — who 50 years ago became the first Black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue — said she often took cocaine, an appetite suppressant, to maintain her weight. Fashion industry decision-makers were all aboard because it maintained her figure.
Keep reading for more on Beverly's shocking diet and the "major wake-up call" that put those days to rest…
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For Beverly Johnson and other models, cocaine use was part of normal, daily life… and they didn't see anything wrong with it.
"We were led to believe that cocaine was not addictive. We didn't know cocaine was addictive. Everyone used drugs back in the day but that particular drug for models was used because we did not eat," she told Page Six in January 2024. "I remember eating two eggs and a bowl of brown rice a week."
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Beverly Johnson, a legendary cover model, admitted her diet — or lack thereof — would get the best of her sometimes.
"I would be shaking in a cab, and I would say pull over because I have to get a bag of M&Ms," she told Page Six in January 2024. "I would just stop and get the shakes. We did not eat, and every time you came to work they would say, 'Yes! Chisel to the bone, girl. Yes,' like congratulating you. Nobody really told you the truth."
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Beverly Johnson finally opened her eyes to her destructive behavior when her mother became concerned and put her in front of a three-way mirror.
"It was the first time I saw my bones looking back at me," she recalled. "It was a major wake-up call for me."
Beverly has now been sober for 50 years.
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In August 1974, Beverly Johnson became the first Black woman to ever grace the cover of Vogue. To this day, she has no idea how she landed the coveted cover. "I honestly think it was a fluke," she told Women's Wear Daily. "In those days, you never knew if you had gotten the cover until you were on the cover."
