Influencer exposes seedy underbelly of glamour modelling and how she lost millions over a racy magazine shoot: ‘I was told not eat and snort coke to be a size 0’

A popular influencer has lifted the lid on the seedy underbelly of glamour modelling before Instagram exploded online. 

Buxom blonde Amy-Jane Brand is just one of many influencers making a living from fashion and lifestyle modelling on social media, but it has come at a price. 

In her Emotional Content podcast, the Perth stunner, 34, lifts the lid on the ‘seedy’ and ‘toxic’ situations she found herself in as young woman on a mission to become Australia’s most successful glamour model. 

She recalls everything from punching a man in the head at a nightclub swimwear contest, to a ‘very famous’ photographer kissing her mid-way through a nude photoshoot, and the LA magazine powerbroker who told her to get to a size zero by ‘not eating and snorting coke.’ 

But worst of all is she ‘missed out on millions of dollars [of inheritance] because of Zoo Weekly’. 

Launched in 2004, Zoo Weekly was a men’s magazine published by Bauer Media Group and featured content on sport, gaming, entertainment, gadgets and the ‘hottest Australian women’.

Perth influencer Amy-Jane Brand has lifted the lid on the ‘seedy’ and ‘toxic’ situations she found herself in as a teenager then young woman on a mission to become Australia’s most successful glamour model

In her Emotional Content podcast, Amy-Jane lifts the lid on the decidedly unglamorous start to her modelling and influencing career that included losing ‘millions’ of dollars 

Amy-Jane says in her early 20s, the magazine would fly her to Sydney for photoshoots and pay $400 for nude photo features and $800 to $1000 for semi-nude magazine covers. 

Back then, that was her bread and butter. 

Zoo Weekly commonly had models sign off on agreements, which essentially meant editors had the freedom to amp up the sex factor with Amy-Jane in the quotes published with her photos. 

This editorial freedom ended up causing Amy-Jane to lose millions.  

‘Everyone I idolised was doing it, so I didn’t think much of it at the time,’ she said. 

‘My grandmother on my dad’s side was very well off – my grandfather passed when I was very young and she was wealthy because of he was a successful businessman.’  

British-born Amy-Jane went on to explain that her dad and his brother – her uncle – had both passed away in 2013. Aside from her, she only had one other cousin who could stand to inherit that money and has never seen or heard from him. 

Amy-Jane is now a content creator and has previously worked as a DJ, stylist, and model around the world

In 2018, Amy-Jane was dubbed the ‘Australian Queen of Coachella’. Pictured with Paris Hilton

Amy-Jane is convinced that her cousin sent her grandmother a copy of Zoo Weekly Australia so that she would be disinherited 

‘This is my version of the truth,’ she said. 

‘I had just done my second Zoo Weekly cover. It was the best week ever. I was very happy about it and well versed as to where it was printed and sold.

‘I get this phone call from my grandmother in the UK. She was beside herself about the magazine. Furious.’ 

The UK edition of Zoo Weekly was a full nude magazine and Amy-Jane’s semi-nude photos and features were not being published there.  

‘However, I get a phone call from her to say she has seen the magazine at her local news agency in the UK, had seen me on the stands and had read the interview,’ Amy-Jane said.  

‘I had never discussed with my grandmother what I was doing with glamour modelling because she wasn’t online and I knew it wouldn’t be her cup of tea.

‘I questioned her about where she got this magazine she stumbled and kept making up s*** about finding it on the stands. She kept diverting the conversation to how disgusting I was. 

‘I never thought that if she did find out that she would completely disown me. She told me that my dad would have been very disappointed in me and that I was being taken off the will. 

‘She didn’t care what I had to say and said she never wanted to speak to me again and quite literally never did.’ 

 She added she wasn’t ‘too bothered’ and ‘didn’t really think about it’ at the time. 

Three years later, she learned her grandmother had passed away and her cousin had inherited the entirety of the family fortune. 

‘He’s probably driving around in a G-wagon right now living it up. I don’t care about the money but it’s a wild story, she said. 

‘The only reason we found out she had passed away is the person who bought her house returned a Christmas card.’

Amy-Jane pictured recently in Perth

Amy-Jane said she ultimately got a nose job because her nose was always airbrushed out of her magazine photos 

Zoo Weekly ended up closing its Australian edition in 2015 due to plummeting sales and accusations of sexism. 

Amy-Jane first got into glamour modelling because she is ‘too short’ for runway modelling and wasn’t ‘cookie cutter clean girl’ enough to enter the Miss Universe Australia pageant. 

‘I read the fine print which stated you agree to sign off that there is no embarrassing material of you existing on the internet that could shame Miss Universe,’ she explained. 

‘I had been partying a lot more than I should have been a the time and didn’t feel comfortable signing off on that. 

‘I specifically wanted to do edgy stuff, bikini shoots and semi-nude stuff that most models weren’t doing.’

Instead, Amy-Jane started paying for expensive photographers to do shoots that she could post on Instagram. 

The social media app, launched in 2010, was still in its infancy.  

‘I paid photographers and the publications paid them, and you’d just be happy to be published in the hopes of being taken more seriously and picking up more work.’

She described one big name photographer getting an erection after taking pictures of her in a bath of milk and Fruit Loops. Another pushed her to go fully nude so intensely that she ran to the bathroom and left. 

‘He sent the photos unedited because I didn’t do what he wanted,’ she explained.

‘At 20, I wasn’t ready to do full nude. I was a size 6. One told me to get to a US size zero by getting involved in the party scene – which meant snort coke and not eat.’ 

Amy-Jane also admitted she got a nose job to remove the ‘bump’ in her side profile that photographers would always airbrush out of her pictures. 

In another shoot in downtown Los Angeles, a photographer she considered a friend was shooting an aerial nude photo of her from above. 

‘I was 26 then. He put the camera down, laid on top of me and kissed me. When I pushed him off he laughed it off.’ 

Amy-Jane was published in GQ, Maxim, Playboy, Sports Illustrated and picked up lucrative brand deal work. She currently has 437,000 Instagram followers.