At 25, Elly understandably thought she was still at the beginning of life. She had big plans ahead of her – she’d moved away from home to the big city, landed her dream job as a flight attendant and another career as a plus-size model beckoned.
But then, after three years of irregular lower back pain and bloating that had been dismissed as nothing serious by doctors, she was suddenly diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer.
Her prognosis wasn’t good and it would have been easy for her to curl up and retreat from public life. But Elly refused to give in.
Instead, she ploughed ahead and fulfilled a modelling contract with a lingerie company, Forever Yours, after undergoing a full hysterectomy and chemotherapy.
With her chin up, bald-headed and bearing a long surgery scar down her front, she posed in underwear in a campaign that went viral around the world. At the time, she didn’t know whether she’d survive to see the end of the month.
In an exclusive interview with the July issue of The Weekly, Elly says, “I wanted to show you can be beautiful when you are going through hell. You’ve just got to keep your head held high and remember, no matter how bad it is, there are always people going through worse.
“You don’t know how strong you are until you are backed into a corner. I worked really hard [on the lingerie campaign] because I knew I was doing something good and that those images will always last.”
Elly appeared on The Today Show to discuss her decision to keep modelling through her sickness.
“I’ve learnt how crucial time is and how important it is to love yourself as you are,” she told Lisa Wilkinson.
Elly Mayday speaks to Lisa Wilkinson on The Today Show.
Raised in a tiny Canadian town of 50 people, Elly moved to Vancouver to follow her childhood dreams of travelling, meeting new people and becoming a star. She loved working as a flight attendant and took up pin-up modelling as a hobby.
“I started out modelling because a lot of people said I was pretty but no-one gave me work because I wasn’t super tall or skinny enough,” she tells The Weekly. “So I went into pin-up because I liked the vintage style – it embraces my curves. I did it just for fun.
With her sizzling curves and striking looks, she was a natural and got noticed by a New York modelling agency, which has since signed her up.
