Bisutti - who now lives in Montana with her husband and volunteers for her local church - first joined the Victoria's Secret line-up after winning a public competition to become an Angel.
"That's when it hit me," she recalled. "I was being paid to strip down and pose provocatively to titillate men. It wasn't about modelling clothes anymore; I felt like a piece of meat. The next day, I broke down and started sobbing. I was in my bedroom and dropped to my knees and started to pray, saying: 'God, why did you have me win the Victoria's Secret Angel competition if it was going to make me feel this way? I'm not honouring my husband. I just want answers!'"
She began to question the impact her modelling shots would have on others
"I realised that I didn't want to model anything that sold sex," she said. "At the time, a Victoria's Secret lingerie show was airing on TV, and I was looking at Twitter and saw loads of tweets from women comparing themselves to the impossible image of the models. I realised my career was sending a bad message to women about confidence and body image."
Today, Bisutti has "never been more content" and is working on a Christian clothing line that she describes as "modest clothes" modelled by women of "all shapes and sizes". She will also release a book, I'm No Angel: From Victoria's Secret Model to Role Model, on May 14 to tell her career story.
"It spreads my message, which is that beauty isn't about what you look like, it's about what's in your heart," she told The New York Post. "That's the most important thing."
