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Focus: Life on the catwalk
A supermodel? No thanks
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]As contestants on a new reality TV show chase their dreams of glamour, Gemma Clarke, who became a star model at 16, tells why she had to quit that harsh world while she was ahead[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Sunday March 20, 2005
The Observer
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]If the fashion industry were to advertise for models in the way other businesses advertise for employees, there would be a distinct shortage of applicants. You can picture the advert: 'Wanted: skinny teen to be scrutinised and reduced to tears on a daily basis. No fixed salary (no salary at all if unsuccessful), no job security or long-term benefits. Pressure to take drugs and chat up sleazeballs. Key skills: sitting still; standing still; occasionally walking. Must be able to maintain unhealthy frame.' And all this in an industry that happily declares itself to be 'cut-throat'.
Watching Channel Five's new reality series Make Me a Supermodel brought back a few home truths about modelling; primarily that the allure of the profession is all in the way it is packaged, and the model has been attributed an air of mystery and excitement. As a friend from my modelling days noted, 'The idea of being a model is enough in itself. It's the title.'
Which is where the modelling contest comes in, working on the premise that everybody loves a competition and the prize is seldom scrutinised. I entered the modelling world at the age of 16 by way of such a contest, thankfully before such events were televised. Perhaps if I had been privy to the wisdom of Tandy Anderson, co-director of Select Model Management and a judge on Make me a Supermodel, I might have thought twice about embarking on such a career. 'This is one of the toughest things you've ever gone through,' announced Anderson to her flock of hopefuls in the programme's first episode. 'Some of you will be reduced to tears. You're going to be scrutinised, poked and prodded. If you don't like it, you're in the wrong business.'
At the time, reaching the finals of a top London agency's nationwide search was a daydream realised, since I had spent my early teens gazing at the beaming faces in magazines and believing them to be the happiest creatures on earth. As the competition reached a climax on the catwalk I became a nervous wreck. I can trace my former smoking habit back to that very day. Not quite able to shake the feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there - a suspicion that remained throughout my time in the job - my walk was so pitiful that I was told I looked like I had 'wooden legs'. I didn't win, but the agency took us all on regardless.
At school my skinny build was deemed unattractive and unhealthy by the opposite sex, but the modelling world, ever the promoter of freakery, embraced it. I revelled in the new-found endorsement of my body weight. I ignored 'advice' from agents to drop out of college before completing my A-levels, and took as much time off as possible without failing altogether. I was soon swanning around the corridors in a haze of egotism.
But the confidence boost was short-lived. It soon became apparent that putting myself forward as a model gave others, namely agents and clients, licence to pick me apart. In my first year I was told my teeth were crooked, my lips were too thin and asymmetrical, my cheekbones weren't defined enough, one arm was longer than the other, I was too thin and not thin enough. And I hadn't even gone full-time.
Being a model was like being in a relationship with a distant, lavishly wealthy yet emotionally abusive partner; someone who made me feel wonderful one minute, and then berated me for being unattractive the next.
Certainly, ritual humiliation is par for the course. A-levels out of the way, I moved to Paris at 17, hooked on the notion of living in glamour. I was miserable. On only my second day I was required to strip to my underwear for a casting and stand in line holding a number while the client walked up and down selecting the girls he wanted to stay, and those he wanted to leave. It was hardly the kind of scenario that teenage girls dream about. Crushingly, I was one of those dismissed.
I shared an apartment with several girls of around the same age with whom I had nothing in common, other than a genetic predisposition to being photogenic. One weekday morning I came out of my room to have breakfast and found them all lolling around, tanked up on speed and acid.
Celebrity models, successful enough to have been credited with a persona, are revered for being 'f*cked up'. Sensible just isn't sexy; wayward is cool; and drug use is positively encouraged within the industry. One booker offered me cocaine on the premise that I 'might as well', but I wasn't interested in becoming more dependent on the industry.
Once I went to a party hosted by a well-known designer and accepted a glass of champagne from a man I didn't know. Luckily, I then followed my friends to a VIP section, where I passed out. I came round to find myself being carried by security staff, conscious but unable to move or speak. Once I had been violently ill and recovered somewhat, the staff, believing that I had been the architect of my own misfortune, bundled me out of the back door and into a waiting car that took me home.
It was a long time before I attended another fashion party, but it was still expected of me as an important part of the job. Being seen to be living the lifestyle is as important as doing the work, if not more so. Just don't expect to be allowed an opinion. I learnt this in my first year in Paris.
I had begun working regularly with top designers and photographers, and my agents were hoping for great things. But my attitude to networking at parties (for which read flirting with influential men) was poor. At one event thrown by my agency I refused to gleefully present myself to a troupe of photographers hoping to chat up some models, and made the mistake of calling them 'arseholes'. This provoked an exasperated response from my booker, who told me: 'Now is not the time to be yourself, Gemma. You can be yourself when you're famous - now you must be who they want you to be.'
This was an unwritten rule: to appear available and to flirt with the decision-makers when required. It is of immeasurable benefit to a model's career to be romantically linked with a celebrity, too: see Rachel Hunter, the presenter of Make Me a Supermodel, who was married to Rod Stewart, and, of course, Kate Moss, whose relationship with Johnny Depp propelled her status beyond the confines of the fashion industry. Often actors and musicians would call up the agency to request the presence of models at parties or hotels, and they were never short of willing participants.
As the contests proliferate, agencies lure girls in by dangling a financial carrot. In reality, it is more like bonded labour, as the money goes directly to the agencies, at whose mercy the models exist. The agency ensures that it is never out of pocket. Common practices include knocking fees down to eliminate the competition, taking effectively 40 per cent of the model's fee (20 per cent from the model, 20 per cent from the client), charging for all overheads, withholding fees until the client has paid, and only paying out so-called advances before then with an added 10-20 per cent commission.
One London-based agency added £300 for one day's 'bike charges' to my monthly statement, without being able to tell me exactly which continent they had been couriering my portfolio to. But complaining relegated me to the bottom of their pile, making it very difficult to acquire work.
Contrary to popular belief, magazines pay very little. Some pay nothing; the prestige of appearing in their pages is considered enough. One shoot I did for Vogue in Paris paid me the equivalent of £20, or £2 an hour. The system works for the simple reason that those pictures may, or may not, lead to more lucrative advertising contracts. This is what keeps models ensnared: the promise of a big-money job looming around the next corner.
So, I earned my living elsewhere, mostly in Tokyo, where the financial rewards are excellent, the working hours appalling (the average day lasts 15 hours, and it's seven days a week) and the body fascism unadulterated. All the girls at my agency were weighed and measured on a near-daily basis. Some were 'advised' not to eat - for brief periods, of course. I was once dangerously close to exceeding the 90cm hip measurement stated on my contract and told to try the 'hard-boiled egg diet'. I retorted that I preferred to stick to the 'balanced diet', but it fell on deaf ears.
Obviously eating disorders are rife, since the ability to earn money is dependent on remaining thin. One close friend at my agency in Japan almost lost her life to anorexia. On my next trip I learnt that she had since been back to Tokyo to work. I asked my manager how she was doing, to which he replied: 'Oh, you know, she still only eats Mentos.'
The obsession with youth there was acute, and my agency marketed me as a perpetual 18-year-old well into my early 20s. Another friend, a successful model in her early 20s, confesses that she is terrified of losing her looks, having spent so long being reliant on them. At only 24, she also believes herself to already be deeply wrinkled.
I also began to think similar thoughts. Shortly before I decided to give up modelling, I was told by a make-up artist to stop smiling so often, as I was getting lines under my eyes. 'Not to worry,' she hissed. 'You can do wonders with an airbrush these days.' I was 23.
The incident that provoked me to relinquish modelling as a career, and use it as a means to fund my degree during breaks in term, was even worse. My mum was very ill and in the middle of a stay in hospital. I returned to work, which meant doing the shows at London Fashion Week. During the preparations for my first show, I felt myself welling up while having my hair done. I made my excuses and found a secluded stairwell in which to sit down and have a cry. Soon after, two of the show's stylists walked past me and laughed. 'Drama queen,' they whispered, just loudly enough for me to hear, and carried on walking.
Thankfully, I had my degree. I have always been obsessed with football and love to write, so I decided to try to combine the two and become a sports journalist. I began a work experience placement at The Observer last year, and I haven't looked back. As it turns out, swapping St Tropez for Stoke has been the best experience of my working life.
For all the negative aspects of the job, I was incredibly fortunate. Modelling gave me enough money to pay my way through university, for which I am eternally grateful. And I wouldn't have been able to travel, live independently and learn some valuable lessons about the fashion industry. Don't be fooled by the myths. Being a model doesn't translate as being beautiful - that is entirely subjective. As one of the judges on Make Me a Supermodel states: 'She is attractive to a heterosexual male, but it's just not fashion.' Also, a great deal of expertise and effort goes in to making models look fabulous. Any aspiring models should just be aware that, from my experience, being a regular model is unlikely to make you happy. I may have a lot less money, and my life doesn't evoke as much fascination, but I am certainly happier and healthier. Just watch the contestants on Make Me a Supermodel this week: how miserable are they? [/font]
A supermodel? No thanks
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]As contestants on a new reality TV show chase their dreams of glamour, Gemma Clarke, who became a star model at 16, tells why she had to quit that harsh world while she was ahead[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Sunday March 20, 2005
The Observer
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]If the fashion industry were to advertise for models in the way other businesses advertise for employees, there would be a distinct shortage of applicants. You can picture the advert: 'Wanted: skinny teen to be scrutinised and reduced to tears on a daily basis. No fixed salary (no salary at all if unsuccessful), no job security or long-term benefits. Pressure to take drugs and chat up sleazeballs. Key skills: sitting still; standing still; occasionally walking. Must be able to maintain unhealthy frame.' And all this in an industry that happily declares itself to be 'cut-throat'.
Watching Channel Five's new reality series Make Me a Supermodel brought back a few home truths about modelling; primarily that the allure of the profession is all in the way it is packaged, and the model has been attributed an air of mystery and excitement. As a friend from my modelling days noted, 'The idea of being a model is enough in itself. It's the title.'
Which is where the modelling contest comes in, working on the premise that everybody loves a competition and the prize is seldom scrutinised. I entered the modelling world at the age of 16 by way of such a contest, thankfully before such events were televised. Perhaps if I had been privy to the wisdom of Tandy Anderson, co-director of Select Model Management and a judge on Make me a Supermodel, I might have thought twice about embarking on such a career. 'This is one of the toughest things you've ever gone through,' announced Anderson to her flock of hopefuls in the programme's first episode. 'Some of you will be reduced to tears. You're going to be scrutinised, poked and prodded. If you don't like it, you're in the wrong business.'
At the time, reaching the finals of a top London agency's nationwide search was a daydream realised, since I had spent my early teens gazing at the beaming faces in magazines and believing them to be the happiest creatures on earth. As the competition reached a climax on the catwalk I became a nervous wreck. I can trace my former smoking habit back to that very day. Not quite able to shake the feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there - a suspicion that remained throughout my time in the job - my walk was so pitiful that I was told I looked like I had 'wooden legs'. I didn't win, but the agency took us all on regardless.
At school my skinny build was deemed unattractive and unhealthy by the opposite sex, but the modelling world, ever the promoter of freakery, embraced it. I revelled in the new-found endorsement of my body weight. I ignored 'advice' from agents to drop out of college before completing my A-levels, and took as much time off as possible without failing altogether. I was soon swanning around the corridors in a haze of egotism.
But the confidence boost was short-lived. It soon became apparent that putting myself forward as a model gave others, namely agents and clients, licence to pick me apart. In my first year I was told my teeth were crooked, my lips were too thin and asymmetrical, my cheekbones weren't defined enough, one arm was longer than the other, I was too thin and not thin enough. And I hadn't even gone full-time.
Being a model was like being in a relationship with a distant, lavishly wealthy yet emotionally abusive partner; someone who made me feel wonderful one minute, and then berated me for being unattractive the next.
Certainly, ritual humiliation is par for the course. A-levels out of the way, I moved to Paris at 17, hooked on the notion of living in glamour. I was miserable. On only my second day I was required to strip to my underwear for a casting and stand in line holding a number while the client walked up and down selecting the girls he wanted to stay, and those he wanted to leave. It was hardly the kind of scenario that teenage girls dream about. Crushingly, I was one of those dismissed.
I shared an apartment with several girls of around the same age with whom I had nothing in common, other than a genetic predisposition to being photogenic. One weekday morning I came out of my room to have breakfast and found them all lolling around, tanked up on speed and acid.
Celebrity models, successful enough to have been credited with a persona, are revered for being 'f*cked up'. Sensible just isn't sexy; wayward is cool; and drug use is positively encouraged within the industry. One booker offered me cocaine on the premise that I 'might as well', but I wasn't interested in becoming more dependent on the industry.
Once I went to a party hosted by a well-known designer and accepted a glass of champagne from a man I didn't know. Luckily, I then followed my friends to a VIP section, where I passed out. I came round to find myself being carried by security staff, conscious but unable to move or speak. Once I had been violently ill and recovered somewhat, the staff, believing that I had been the architect of my own misfortune, bundled me out of the back door and into a waiting car that took me home.
It was a long time before I attended another fashion party, but it was still expected of me as an important part of the job. Being seen to be living the lifestyle is as important as doing the work, if not more so. Just don't expect to be allowed an opinion. I learnt this in my first year in Paris.
I had begun working regularly with top designers and photographers, and my agents were hoping for great things. But my attitude to networking at parties (for which read flirting with influential men) was poor. At one event thrown by my agency I refused to gleefully present myself to a troupe of photographers hoping to chat up some models, and made the mistake of calling them 'arseholes'. This provoked an exasperated response from my booker, who told me: 'Now is not the time to be yourself, Gemma. You can be yourself when you're famous - now you must be who they want you to be.'
This was an unwritten rule: to appear available and to flirt with the decision-makers when required. It is of immeasurable benefit to a model's career to be romantically linked with a celebrity, too: see Rachel Hunter, the presenter of Make Me a Supermodel, who was married to Rod Stewart, and, of course, Kate Moss, whose relationship with Johnny Depp propelled her status beyond the confines of the fashion industry. Often actors and musicians would call up the agency to request the presence of models at parties or hotels, and they were never short of willing participants.
As the contests proliferate, agencies lure girls in by dangling a financial carrot. In reality, it is more like bonded labour, as the money goes directly to the agencies, at whose mercy the models exist. The agency ensures that it is never out of pocket. Common practices include knocking fees down to eliminate the competition, taking effectively 40 per cent of the model's fee (20 per cent from the model, 20 per cent from the client), charging for all overheads, withholding fees until the client has paid, and only paying out so-called advances before then with an added 10-20 per cent commission.
One London-based agency added £300 for one day's 'bike charges' to my monthly statement, without being able to tell me exactly which continent they had been couriering my portfolio to. But complaining relegated me to the bottom of their pile, making it very difficult to acquire work.
Contrary to popular belief, magazines pay very little. Some pay nothing; the prestige of appearing in their pages is considered enough. One shoot I did for Vogue in Paris paid me the equivalent of £20, or £2 an hour. The system works for the simple reason that those pictures may, or may not, lead to more lucrative advertising contracts. This is what keeps models ensnared: the promise of a big-money job looming around the next corner.
So, I earned my living elsewhere, mostly in Tokyo, where the financial rewards are excellent, the working hours appalling (the average day lasts 15 hours, and it's seven days a week) and the body fascism unadulterated. All the girls at my agency were weighed and measured on a near-daily basis. Some were 'advised' not to eat - for brief periods, of course. I was once dangerously close to exceeding the 90cm hip measurement stated on my contract and told to try the 'hard-boiled egg diet'. I retorted that I preferred to stick to the 'balanced diet', but it fell on deaf ears.
Obviously eating disorders are rife, since the ability to earn money is dependent on remaining thin. One close friend at my agency in Japan almost lost her life to anorexia. On my next trip I learnt that she had since been back to Tokyo to work. I asked my manager how she was doing, to which he replied: 'Oh, you know, she still only eats Mentos.'
The obsession with youth there was acute, and my agency marketed me as a perpetual 18-year-old well into my early 20s. Another friend, a successful model in her early 20s, confesses that she is terrified of losing her looks, having spent so long being reliant on them. At only 24, she also believes herself to already be deeply wrinkled.
I also began to think similar thoughts. Shortly before I decided to give up modelling, I was told by a make-up artist to stop smiling so often, as I was getting lines under my eyes. 'Not to worry,' she hissed. 'You can do wonders with an airbrush these days.' I was 23.
The incident that provoked me to relinquish modelling as a career, and use it as a means to fund my degree during breaks in term, was even worse. My mum was very ill and in the middle of a stay in hospital. I returned to work, which meant doing the shows at London Fashion Week. During the preparations for my first show, I felt myself welling up while having my hair done. I made my excuses and found a secluded stairwell in which to sit down and have a cry. Soon after, two of the show's stylists walked past me and laughed. 'Drama queen,' they whispered, just loudly enough for me to hear, and carried on walking.
Thankfully, I had my degree. I have always been obsessed with football and love to write, so I decided to try to combine the two and become a sports journalist. I began a work experience placement at The Observer last year, and I haven't looked back. As it turns out, swapping St Tropez for Stoke has been the best experience of my working life.
For all the negative aspects of the job, I was incredibly fortunate. Modelling gave me enough money to pay my way through university, for which I am eternally grateful. And I wouldn't have been able to travel, live independently and learn some valuable lessons about the fashion industry. Don't be fooled by the myths. Being a model doesn't translate as being beautiful - that is entirely subjective. As one of the judges on Make Me a Supermodel states: 'She is attractive to a heterosexual male, but it's just not fashion.' Also, a great deal of expertise and effort goes in to making models look fabulous. Any aspiring models should just be aware that, from my experience, being a regular model is unlikely to make you happy. I may have a lot less money, and my life doesn't evoke as much fascination, but I am certainly happier and healthier. Just watch the contestants on Make Me a Supermodel this week: how miserable are they? [/font]
I can hardly believe it, agencies who weigh their models on a daily basis. That's like the main ingredient for an ED, seriously. (you don't hear me saying that it applies to everyone)
A lot of girls seem to 'need' to hurt others every once in a while, but they don't really understand or mean whát they say then.
