Originally a comment by Jen B Phillips on You oughta be in pictures, you oughta be a star.
Suppose she’s bubbling over with excitement about her future educational plans, and one of the guests tells her, “You’re so pretty – you should go into modeling!”
Something very close to that scenario happened to me more than once. It’s vexing.
I thought the main point of Ophelia’s original post was that gendered limitations (through marketing) on toy choices fail to present girls with the full range of career possibilities that is more readily available to boys. I think this is dead on.
I have tried to get caught up on this in the other comment threads, but I’m probably still missing a lot. I think it’s safe to say that most of the 30% of girls who aspire to become models when they grow up are basing that opinion on how fun it is to play dress-up, and are not fully informed about the life of a professional model. I think it’s also true that for *some* girls or women with this particular career goal, it is a way to gain validation through the marketability of conventional beauty and thinness.
I had some minuscule amount of success as a model as a young woman, on the runway here and there and in regional department store flyers, greeting cards, etc. I earned enough to pay rent and buy my (used) textbooks for a few years of college. It was occasionally fun, but rarely something I found rewarding–that is, I don’t recall thinking ‘hey, that was a good day’s work, standing on that fake boat deck for 4 hours’ or ‘Boy, I’m really proud of the way I wore that Anne Klein outfit!’. Rather than being affirming or validating, having agents, stylists, photographers and clothing vendors fussing over my face, body, or posture and treating me like a living wax work was quite dehumanizing. The agency representing me indicated that I needed a lot of ‘work’ (boobs, nose, lips) if I wanted to take it to the next level. I didn’t.
It’s really not a great job. The parameters defining its existence are pretty crappy ones, and the reasons for wanting to get into and stay in it can be unhealthy. I don’t think it maligns the integrity or intelligence of models to point that out.
Thanks for the voice of experience. It’s one thing to look at it from the outside, and quite another to have been there and done that.
” I don’t think it maligns the integrity or intelligence of models to point that out.”
I don’t think so either, I have found models (with fairly limited experience) to be more than averagely bright, maybe because intelligence shows in the face, the eyes. But I don’t think it is a mystery why it is so attractive to young women, and I don’t think it is irrational. A model has a punt at huge success, fame and and riches very young and with almost no training, education or expertise needed. That is appealing even if the chance of making it is small. And the other job options are usually just as bad or much worse. It is why, presumably, young men go into drug gangs even though they will almost certainly be killed or imprisoned and live hand to mouth while doing it (there is a famous study that shows that most drug gang members earn significantly less than burger flippers). When you are young, you are less risk averse and, anyway, if it doesn’t work out, you can change with little harm done. The same is not necessarily true if you mistakenly go into a medical career say (I know a few who bitterly regret that choice).
The parameters defining its existence are pretty crappy ones, and the reasons for wanting to get into and stay in it can be unhealthy. I don’t think it maligns the integrity or intelligence of models to point that out.
Not at all, any more than it’s reasonable to point out the up and downsides of any other job.
Your experience with the push for boob jobs and thinness is certainly common in some parts of the modelling world, particularly runway modelling and big fashion print. That’s a relatively small (but hugely visible) part of that field; if you pick up more consumer-oriented catalogs, like L.L. Bean, Gap, etc, you’ll notice that the models they hire are more in line with the build and appearance of their target customers. You couldn’t put a runway model in those catalogs because the outfits wouldn’t fit them properly at all. I’ve got a friend who’s a professional bodybuilder, who runs fitness centers, and models as well; she’s not gonna do runways or Gap ads but if you’ve seen a muscular butt in spandex in an ad for sporting goods, you’ve probably seen her ass. You’ve got to go with what fits.
I think that the internet has opened up media (due to lowering the cost boundary for production) to a wider range of interests and options, and that has an effect across the creative spectrum. it also pushes prices down, as you’ve no longer got a lot of big fashion magazines, who artificially distorted our sense of there being a pinnacle occupied by Claudia and Kate and Christy.