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Would you be a model?

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

23:01 / 03.05.05

So let's say you are a good looking person. Well, not just good looking, but the kind of good looking that translates very well to pictures and video images.

You've been hearing for a while now the suggestion that you should try modeling. You've been avoiding the thought, for various reasons (trying hard not to be seen as vain, objections to the industry in general, embarrassed by the idea of people finding out, embarrassed of the idea of failing, hatred of cameras, have a real career to worry about, whatever) but then someone tells you that you can make a fuckin' OBSCENE amount of money doing it. Obscene when you realize that they're basically paying you to stand still while they take pictures, or walk around a bit in stranger's clothes. Someone in a position to make offers...makes you an offer (and, after some investigation, you determine this person/agency is legit and not asking you for any money at all).

What would you do?

You've been told by many intelligent people that modeling only furthers unhealthy physical standards regarding shape and beauty. And you've heard terrible things about the industry, about how models are treated by higher ups (as objects, but not fun objects like paintings and sculptures but more like sacks of meat that are currently in a pleasing shape) and how models end up treating each other, and other people in general. You've heard there's a drug problem, a problem with depression, and all kinds of other nasty stuff. Sounds like a bad scene. Nasty vibes everywhere.

All of this is heresay, but what is for real is the check some people are willing to write to you for you standing still for a few hours looking pretty.

Would you feel it a comprise of your standards/morals? Would you do it anyway? Would be afraid of any potential changes in your own personality? Would you do it for a bit, make some money, then get out? Do you think it's that easy?

23:06 / 03.05.05

So this is a friend of yours?

Look pretty. Take the money. Instead of spending it on drugs and fast cars, put a chunk of it towards an anorexia support group or some other worthy cause.

Whisky Priestess

23:10 / 03.05.05

If they are stupid enough to pay you, all you have to be is clever enough to take the money but just say no to the drugs, slog, vanity, crapness, vacuity and soul-sucking self-esteem vacuum that is that world. If you are a strong person with a healthy sense of self (and more to you than a pretty face), you are more likely to emerge unscathed.

However, be aware that if you do it full time, be prepared to have to defend or apologise for it at every (and I mean every) turn. You might want to take up a part-time degree in noocular physics or marine biology (why is it models always do marine biology? Must be something in the water ...) just to avoid the "dumb" label.

23:21 / 03.05.05

I say take the drugs but say no to: slog, vanity, crapness, vacuity and soul-sucking self-esteem vacuum

23:23 / 03.05.05

Oh go for all of it! The whole shit and kaboodle! Then you can make even more money when you sell the movie rights for you autobiography.

23:43 / 03.05.05

As above. Take the money. Don't do poses you think are 'bad'. Tithe to worthy cause.

23:47 / 03.05.05

all depends, like anything, on the 'why' of your [friend's?] decision...

if you approach the modelling industry from the standpoint of fashion being a fun game and the art and creativity underpinning it being the point, not the clothes/model/event itself, then you'll be ok; have lots of fun working with interesting people and, as you point out, get paid shitloads for the pleasure!

try to understand the other players' perspective (the designer, the photographer, the photo editor, etc) and work with them, they'll love you, treat you well and it is up to you how you deal with the temptations of the fast life.

personally, tell them you don't get out of bed for under ten grand a day. (and only do shoots IN bed for fifty grand a day!!)

good luck - tell us how it all goes (for your friend, of course...)

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

23:51 / 03.05.05

This isn't about advice for me, although I can see why you would think it is. Many of my posts in this forum are me asking for advice, and I am a handsome devil. But this is a hypothetical question directed at you all.

I'm saying this: Someone wants to give YOU a check for modeling. You see the terrible reprocussions that COULD arise, you see what you MIGHT turn into, but the money is there, and it's good, and it doesn't care if you're vain or if your friends stop talking to you. Would YOU take it anyway? The glamour, the emptiness, the things people will say about you in exchange for money and people knowing you are more attractive than them?

00:08 / 04.05.05

People know whether you're more attractive than them anyway. Lots of people have lots of money. I don't see any huge moral dilemma here. The only thing I've ever heard models properly complain of is the boredom. I reckon I'd quit on those grounds before I quit on moral ones. I wouldn't have thought that my friend would stop talking to me because I was a *model*.
I'd want an *obcene* amount of money though.

00:13 / 04.05.05

Apologies for the typoes. I think I've got a sticky 's'. There's no way I'm moderating a post to give myself more than one friend, though. Freud would spank me

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

00:16 / 04.05.05

You'd get it. (Your cue to say "I'd better", then I say in an upbeat tone "You will!". And then we'd go rescue the princess from Cell Block D).

And of course you wouldn't think your friends would stop talking to you just because you're a model. But then you're gone for long periods, you make more money then they do for a lot less work, all your stories are about other models or famous people, you develop a drug problem, move to Manhattan and generally turn into a jerkoff and they give up on you. Happens a lot, I'm told.

00:21 / 04.05.05

I think that's quite a small proportion of working models. You'd be fine, really.

00:32 / 04.05.05

*Estate Agent* on the other hand. I couldn't be an estate agent for all the money in the world.

02:18 / 04.05.05

You know, I don't think I could. Apart from the fact that nobody's asked. I'm pretty careful about what I do for money. Because money is a rough thing & there's parts of myself that aren't tough enough for that. Parts of me are pretty goddamned tough. But I won't even *design* for money, and that's the least important of my artistic pursuits. I'm certainly not tough about my looks. Also I don't like to be looked at. And I don't like to be told what to do. All said --pretty much not cut out to be a model.

05:37 / 04.05.05

I think it would be really very boring.

I might do it for a little while, the novelty wouldn't wear off for a month or two I should think, but I don't think I'd have much trouble giving it up, for that reason. Also, being older than people usually are when they go into the industry, I think the chances of being dazzled by the "glamour" are lower. Being relentlessly cynical and negative does have its upside.

Whisky Priestess

10:16 / 04.05.05

I'm not sure I could cope with people *constantly* thinking I was and treating me as though I was stupid. The only one I've met (male) introduced his degree into the first minute of any conversation with anyone, and regularly namedropped it thereafter. The desperation to be taken seriously was almost palpable.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:06 / 04.05.05

We nearly had to recite our own eugoogolies there...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:13 / 04.05.05

The simple solution to that is to get yopur Nobel Prize first. You have to plan careers, you know. (Stumbles back to bed to get up later for crappy night-shift job.)

16:25 / 04.05.05

Taking lots of money off very rich people in return for being good at wearing clothes? Where's the dilemma? And I think you would agree that Naomi Campbell has proven by her example that there need be no loss of intellectual or political credibility.

16:35 / 04.05.05

The only models I've ever met were both obnoxious, drunken, drug-addled, promiscuous idiots who did nothing but talk about their shoots and the magazines they'd been in and who they'd slept with. Very attention-seeking, very nasty.

I realize that two girls constitutes a very small sample of the modeling population and not is necessarily representative, but it hasn't given me a very favorable opinion of the industry.

04:15 / 05.05.05

apparently claudia schiffer turned up to naomi campbell's book launch (was the title something about swans?? nasty viscious things they are!)

[claws at twenty paces]

claudia: great book, naomi. who wrote it for you?

naomi: so glad you liked it. who read it for you?

[i may be wrong about it being claudia - might have been, well, nearly any one of them..! [not elle, though. she's 'strylian]

hell, for that much money and the chance to *mingle* with other beautiful people, i might be tempted.. : ) but no-one ever asked : (

15:53 / 05.05.05

I would like to be a hand model, as long as I didn't have to get those square, thick plastic nails glued on.

Being a foot model would be even better, though career disaster would strike if you stubbed your toe before an important shoot.

16:45 / 05.05.05

Yeah, sure, why the hell not? My friend turned down work as a model for all the moral reason listed here. He's worked in a video shop for 5 years now. He likes his job but...he could have a few thousand euro in the bank and still work in Extravision if he'd really wanted it that way. It's not like whoever was offering him the job was so chastened by his refusal that they gave up the business and went to breed organic yaks or something.

Contrary to Sekhmet's experience of models, I have two friends who did bits and pieces of photographic modelling while putting themselves through college and they're both lovely, smart and unobnoxious. But it's worth noting that their jobs did not offer the kind of drugs and glamour that some seem to think goes with the territory. It's a boring job and not everyone can do it. There's a lot of pretty people who actually aren't that photogenic or get fussed and can't get into decent poses when the camera is upon them.

20:20 / 05.05.05

It is a paradox that models have tight, meagre little asses usually and therefore wouldn't be able to squeeze much dosh up them.

I on the other hand have a huuuuuge ass and could accommodate a mighty assload of coins, credit cards and promisory notes. But it's unlikely I would prosper on the international model circuit.

I might have a career in Tonga though. I gather they like a bit of beer-filled beary bloke over there.

20:23 / 05.05.05

Come to think of it, I did once feature in a gay magazine dressed in a rubber surf suit at the annual Mr Hoist competition. No urgent phone calls from Armani or Stella McCartney the next day though...

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

03:04 / 08.05.05

i may be wrong about it being claudia - might have been, well, nearly any one of them..! [not elle, though. she's 'strylian]

Quite right. She would not have made nasty remarks. She would've opened a Foster's beer bottle with her eye socket and then killed something with a boomerang.

15:03 / 08.05.05

What if someone offered you an assload of cash?

I'd tell them to take it out of the ass first.

22:55 / 08.05.05

Somebody offered me something of this order last night.

I was in the queue for Torture Garden (Did anybody else go, btw?) when a lady came up to me and gave me a card, asking me to call her during the week, please. Its adult calender and film work, apparently. Irrespective of any of the above moral points, I'm sticking with the 'my girlfriend would kill me' argument, I think.