While taking new Polaroids, my booker turned to me and asked: “Have you heard about this reality show that BBC 4 is doing with Premier? It’s baa-a-a-d. Everyone here was shocked.” 0diggsdigg Intrigued, and hoping to find something hateful about Premier (they rejected me two years ago), I went back to my flat to watch it. But, unlike my booker, I didn’t find it that shocking.
Yes, the Premier bookers seem more dramatic and less mature than most I’ve worked with, talking **** about their own models as well as each other. But the show itself didn’t convey anything shocking about their fraught job. In fact, Premier isn’t doing anything differently from any of the agencies I’ve encountered. Generally, the show does shed light on a bunch of prevailing but typically misconstrued ideas about the industry. For example, how some models make lots of money, while others work for no pay. Or how ****ed up the weight issue can be; one client asks a booker to cast only girls with 31” hips—my jaw dropped at this—and weight, since either being too big or too small is constantly an issue. Or how nearly impossible it is to become a supermodel, even if you have a team of people behind you trying to make it happen. But all this is more or less common knowledge. The only thing that people might find shocking is the fickle, sometimes fraught relationship between model and booker.
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