Sunday Star Times 16.08.2009
New Zealand
"Jenna Sauers, the girl with the brains,the bone structure and the blog, is coming homer after her galmorous OE.
Sauers grew up in Christchurch, won a prestigious scholarship to the University of Iowa, then spent two year modelling for magazines
like Harpers Bazaar and Marie Claire.
However,between shoots, and hair and make-up marathons, Sauers secretly blogged about how screwed-up the modelling industry really was.
It tolerated subtle racism and sexual harassment, she wrote.
" There's potential for exploitation in any relationship which is based on a 14yr old girl being photographed by a 47 yr old man."
Sauers quit modelling 3 weeks ago. Of course, she left in style, outing herself on her blog and telling the world she'd rather be a writer.
Her story was picked up by the international media.
Come next month, Sauers will be in Aucklandto write about Fashion Week, and she seems more excited to be writing about the catwalk
than she was to model for Karen Walker and Zambesi at the same event last year.
"I want to write in such a way that some of the magnitude of fashion week- the many many hours of labour, the economics of it all,
the sheer organisational heft that goes into producing such an ephemeral series of events- comes across", she wrote in an email last week.
And although she loves living in New York, Sauers is looking froward to a fix of Godzone. "I naturally get a little homesick from time to time.
New York is fantastic becaouse it's such an international cross-roads that I often have friends from home passing through, and they are good
about stuffing gingernuts and manuka honey into their suitcases....but NZ remains home fro me"
She said it best in her blog during Fashion Week 2008:" Like a lot of young Kiwis, I need to be away from NZ now. But I also need it to
be here when I am ready to come back."