A job that includes donning branded clothing and trendy shoes, travelling to exotic destinations, being at the centre of publicity, catwalks and billboards are undeniably thrilling and sexy. Yet impressions can be misleading, just like any public profession, the dark side of modelling remains understated.
The stuff we don't see:
The world of fashion is made up of big names, high-end designers, sexy clothing and sparkling top-of-the-line accessories. Therefore, this essay tries to explain the drawbacks of the ideal career and helps those who wish to build a realistic view:
Blurry Boundaries:
For models, the edges between the personal and professional, being sexy and being normal are quite blurred. The unique demands of their job are to exude with sex appeal and sell the product or concept through it. The young women and men often end up leading this persona in their regular lives, or at least it's expected from them. Struggling and naïve ones end up falling to cons and predators who are ready to take advantage of them. Undesired attention, sexual harassment along with sexual abuse are pretty common in this industry. Not all models sleep their way to the top; nevertheless, promiscuity and the presence of a casting couch are subtle but undeniable secrets.
A Stressful Work Environment: 
A
model seems to be the center of attention: the agency, clients,
designers, makeup artists, stylists, photographers, media and, of
course, paparazzi. While all this attention may feel enticing, it also means a lot of demands and pressure. Models have to work for hours or even days to get a single shot right. The
demands of creative directors, stylists and whoever else involved in
the process can get to be tougher to the extent of becoming
unreasonable. More importantly, not everyone can make it to the top like Kate Moss or Gisele Bündchen, or stay there for long for that matter. Most models keep struggling and end up fizzling out eventually. A
dark side of fashion is that there is no job security in their line of
work and models are replaced faster than anyone else in the job industry
and are bound to sidelined and forgotten by their agencies as soon as
someone younger or sexier comes along.
The Pressure to Look Good “All the Time”
What makes modeling a tricky job is that it requires these women have to look good all the time at any and every cost. This expectation isn’t realistic and causes a lot of pressure and anxiety.
Moreover, a zero size is still considered the ideal and favored by modeling agencies and designers. Achieving and maintaining this body ideal requires rigorous exercising and careful, strict dieting as well as weight control. Some
models resort to extreme measures like nose surgeries like nose jobs,
breast augmentation surgeries, and liposuction to achieve the ideal
weight and shape and stay unhealthily thin. Struggling
models are required to often pay for these procedures, beauty
treatments, and professional portfolios out of their pocket.
The Price of Looking Good: Long-Term Health Issues
Many models are unable to bear the unique demands and pressures of the modeling career for long and end up breaking down. They
develop a multitude of long-term physical, emotional and psychological
issues that they find it hard to recover from on their own. The
inability to stick to a demanding, unforgiving diet, fitness and beauty
regimen makes models develop serious health and emotional disorders
like anorexia and bulimia . Most
of them end up resorting to substance abuse like alcohol, drug
addiction and self-prescribed medications like antidepressants to escape
the work pressures. One
of the many modeling industry facts that may surprise is that a study
conducted by the US Center for Disease Control compared the suicide
rates across occupations, found a strong link between fashion industry occupations and mental illness.
Modelling contracts take away your freedom of choice
A model’s first agency will usually become their ‘mother’ agency,
thereby receiving the model’s power of attorney. They enjoy the power to
enter models into any contract without even having to tell them,
however models usually retain full legal responsibility.
That means that if they signed you up to do a nude shoot and you said
no, theoretically you’d be the one the client would sue for production
costs.
That’s not all. The contracts allow the agency to drop you if you
don’t follow their advice on how you should look, meaning that you’d
have to follow their decisions or risk being dropped and not being able
to work for 3 months, due to the non-compete clause present in most
contracts.
Models don’t get told anything:
People often assume models are stupid, which is usually because they
are kept completely in the dark. We rarely see our individual job
contracts, as these are all signed on our behalf – only receiving the
bare minimum of details, including an address and a time to be there.
Models have to attend lots of castings in order to book one job
Unless you’re a supermodel, chances are that you are being sent to
auditions on a daily basis, based all over a city. These usually involve
queues and last between 5-10 minutes. It is normal for casting
directors to ask anything at all of you, including changing into
underwear. There is no way for model agencies to check that these castings are 100% legitimate
Sexual exploitation is incredibly common
Models experience sexual pressure all the way through their careers.
From the start, where they are often expected to shoot for free in
photographer’s houses to build their portfolios, to castings in hotel
rooms and predatory clients who take advantage of the power they wield
over models, one must always be on alert.
Much sexual abuse is put down to ‘creativity’, and is especially
commonly experienced by male models who do not have the same opportunity
to speak out as female models do.
A model from Mumbai said," I have been pressured to shoot naked, had a photographer attempt to spike
my drink, pressured to pose sexually with other models and have had
photographers contact me inappropriately following shoots. It is very
difficult to speak out about this without being deemed ‘difficult’ and
having work withheld from me as a result.
