Saturday 24 January 2009

Making Models

Today I observed, yet again, a slightly lost-looking young girl standing like a lamb to the slaughter, semi-naked, in front of a room full of (mostly) middle-aged men. I thought to myself, as I have on many previous occasions at these photography tradeshows, what a miserable job being a model is.

They need someone young and firm for the demonstration of some technique or other; she, presumably, needs to show face where her agent sends her – all high hopes, and willingness to do whatever’s required.

She looked uncomfortable – a little scared, even. She did not look strong and empowered and like she enjoyed the attention. Yet.

By the time they’ve knocked the innocence out of her, and carved her into the part-woman part-pre-pubescent-girl that seems to please our ravenous society, she’ll be cynical, hardened, and narcissistic. She’ll have learnt over and over that her worth lies in her looks; that much, if not all of what she is, comprises her appearance. She will believe that her value – her power, her earning ability in cold hard numbers, her social standing – lies in her physical beauty. And then she will revel in her perceived superiority – the woman others want to be; the woman boys want to fuck. She’ll revel in her power, in being prized, in being the trophy. Whilst underneath, everyday, she will be panicking as one more wrinkle appears, and her breasts begin an inevitable descent, and she has to run an extra mile to stop her periods re-starting.

She’ll panic because we’ve told her that is who she is (all she is), and why she is important. Without her beauty she will believe she is nothing. Then we will deplore her desperate attempts to stay young – we will mock her botox and plastic surgery. We will create a monster, and then loathe it.

Women will always have hated her. And the sort of men with whom she will have surrounded herself will have no further use for her.

I saw, standing up there, a person young enough to be still half-formed. Personality yet to be confirmed, like a baby’s skull before the soft bit has sealed up. And even as I watch, she becomes a piece of meat in front of hungry eyes. Some inner essence or other being bled from her, rendering her blank enough for mass appeal. So she will be primed: ready and willing and open wide when everybody’s fantasies are thrust upon her.

It baffles me that people aspire to this. Ranks of girls ready to throw themselves from the trenches. Sometimes I hate my job.

When I worked with my first anorexic model, half of me wanted to hold her, tell her she was beautiful even with food inside her, yell at her: ‘for crying out loud, don’t mistake thinness for self-worth’. Whilst part of me thought I’d undergone a right of passage – I must be a real photographer now I’ve worked with a bona fide anorexic.

First posted on Facebook, 18th January 2009

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