The Life Of A Fashion Model: Grueling, Not Glitzy
April 22, 2024Many little girls aspire to be fashion models when they grow up. But the lives of models are often far less glamorous than they appear. Fashion model-turned-sociologist Ashley Mears shares her stories of the real nitty-gritty of modeling.
NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. They have little job security, work freelance in an industry that makes billions, yet their daily pay may be a free lunch. They don't get health coverage, they experience constant criticism and rejection, some wind up in debt to their employers, and they're too old at 24.
They're models who turn out, do grueling work in an industry glutted with glamorous competition. For every Gisele who earns millions, dozens of girls and young women get paid in clothes or in free lunch or $150 for a day-long shoot, which may remind you more of Dickens than glamour.
Today we'll look at an industry and understand why understanding it is important. If you've had experience in the fashion industry as a model, an agent or as a mother, call and tell us your story. Our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Later in the program, musician Stephan Said's campaign to move from a message to a movement. But first, Ashley Mears joins us from member station WBUR in Boston. She's an assistant professor of sociology at Boston University, and she studied models by becoming one. Nice to have you with us today.
ASHLEY MEARS: Hi, Neal, thank you.
CONAN: And we tend to think of models as those glamorous creatures traveling by limo who party back - party with their quarterback boyfriends. Give us a snapshot of what the life is actually like.
MEARS: Well, there's a lot of misleading conceptions about what the modeling life is like. In part that's due to the nature of the job. It's what we would call a winner-take-all industry, meaning that you have a handful of winners at the top of the hierarchy who are making very visible and very lucrative rewards, and we see that all the time celebrated in the popular press.
However, there's an enormous pile of people who are struggling to make ends meet or just getting by, that are hoping for their chance to become winners as well. And so when we de-center those winners, and we don't look at them, but rather we look at all the invisible people that are trying to become them, we get a pretty different picture, exactly the opposite of what most people think modeling is like.
It is technically what a sociologist would call - it's structurally a bad job, meaning that it's precarious work. Follow TS Studios on Pinterest
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