Breaking Amish's Kate Stoltz swaps piety for lingerie modelling
After appearing on the 2012 TLC series reality show 'Breaking Amish', 23-year old Kate Stoltz has swapped bonnets and barn-raising for bras and basques, modelling lingerie in New York.
The TV show followed a group of Amish youngsters in a trip to New York to experience a different way of life and consider the question of whether they would return to their communities.
Stoltz was soon signed up to Major Model Management and a return to straw hats and horse drawn carts seems more and more unlikely.
For Ms Stoltz, being in a career that involves photographed is a departure enough, since Amish beliefs prohibit photographs of themselves because of pride or vanity.
Quoted in Huffington Post, Ms Stoltz said: "The Amish think that modelling is one of the worst things a woman can do, they see it as flaunting your body and being vain."
The fact that it is lingerie she is modelling however pushes it one step further, "If I were to even show my father face to face a lingerie picture that I took he would probably burn it and tell me that I'm going to hell."
Speaking about her life before the move to New York, Ms Stoltz said: "Before school I would go out and feed the cows.
"After school I'd take care of the calves, I make dinner for the family and spend about six hours at a time just out in the fields raking hay."
Her wardrobe was also heavily regulated, with shapeless dresses of very plain colours, and her head would always have to be covered.
Before she lived in a town where she might have known everyone else's name. Now she is having to get used to a city of millions.
"I actually found it really hard to get used to New York because it's so loud and there's so many people."
But she is moving on, and while her family disapproves of her choices, she knows they still care for her deeply.
"Even though they don't approve of my lifestyle they're always telling me to come back home.
"I couldn't ask for better parents or better brothers and sisters."
Even her father has come to accept her choices, despite his position in the community.
"My dad's a minister in the church," Ms Stoltz explains. "He of course does not approve but then again he also knows that he can't control my life."
But there is no turning back now, as Ms Stoltz's plans for the future are already in the works.
"I want to be on a billboard in the middle of Times Square," she says, "and I want to be the first person in my family to ever have a college education."
She will however be keeping in touch with her community, and plans to return to visit in the planned TLC show, 'Return to Amish'.