One Victoria's Secret angel might be turning her back on lingerie modeling but she's not giving up her modeling wings.
Model Kylie Bisutti, 21, has decided to leave Victoria's Secret because it clashes with her Christian beliefs.
"I just became so convicted of honoring the Lord and my body and wanting to be a role model for other women out there who look up to me," Bisutti said today on "Good Morning America."
The California native beat out 10,000 hopefuls in 2009 to win the Victoria's Secret Model Search. She was 19 and recently married at the time.
But wearing the coveted angel wings and walking the runway with Adriana Lima and Miranda Kerr wasn't quite what Bisutti had hoped for.
(Image Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage)
"I was growing in my relationship with the Lord and my faith. I'm a strong believing Christian," Bisutti told "GMA" of how her thoughts on the job she has described as her "absolutely biggest goal in life" began to change.
"It was more of just a heart issue for me," she said.
Though Bisutti has cited her husband and her desire to keep their marriage special as factors in her decision to leave her lingerie modeling days behind, she said the decision was hers alone.
"He was so, so supportive of me and I'm so thankful that he let me grow and let me come to this decision on my own," she said of her husband.
Bisutti's decision to leave the lingerie company was also spurred on by an encounter with her 8-year-old cousin.
"I was doing my makeup in the mirror one day and she was watching me," Bisutti said. "She looked at me and was like, 'You know, I think I want to stop eating so I can look like you.'"
"It just broke my heart because she looks up to me and I didn't want to be that type of person that she thought she had to do that to be beautiful," she said. "Thousands of girls that think that being beautiful is an outer issue and really it's a heart issue."
On Dec. 1, one day after the nationally televised Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, in which Bisutti didn't appear, aired, the model posted to her Twitter page, "For all of you that were looking for me in the Victorias Secret runway show this year, I wasn't in it. I have decided not to model lingerie Because I personally feel that I am not honoring God or my husband by doing it. My marriage is very important & with divorce rates rising I want to do everything I can to protect my marriage and be respectful to my husband. God graciously gave me this marriage and this life and my desire is to live a Godly faithful life, I don't however judge others for what they do. Everyone is convicted on different levels."
Bisutti says her headline-making decision does not mean she is giving up her modeling career altogether.
"I'm definitely going to pursue modeling," she said on "GMA." "I just want to be more wholesome about it and the jobs that I am going to choose are always going to be honoring the Lord."
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