When I was 23, I moved to Portland, Oregon and started a job as an independent model scout for a local agency. When I first heard about the job it seemed perfect. It was glamorous, unusual, freelance, and I have to admit that I was attracted to the prospect of being able to walk up to people and not only tell them they were beautiful, but offer them an amazing opportunity to make tons of money. Since I had absolutely no experience in the fashion world, I was completely surprised when I was called in for an interview.
The agency was based out of the second floor of this super-hip glass-front building right in my neighborhood. The actual office was huge and sparsely decorated with a long white desk, two white computers, and two white leather couches. The two girls who served as the agency’s “coordinators” scanned through amateur photos of half-naked girls and said things like “her smile is just so…awkward.” I sat on the white leather couches and drank an impossibly small bottle of spring water and tried really hard to appear chic.
The reason I was called in for an interview, I found out, was because everyone who applied was called in for an interview. The main qualification for starting the job was basically the ability to walk up to total strangers without completely freaking them out and, since I was nonthreatening, friendly, and able to make my way through a few role-playing scenarios where I said things like “I love your hair! “How tall are you?” they told me I was a natural and gave me the job.
A few days later I attended the scout training where I learned about the different types of models I would be scouting. The training was lead by the owner of the agency, a middle-aged man with frosted hair who bafflingly managed to maintain a steady tan throughout the Portland winter. I learned that the agency had a few different categories for local and international models including their “classic” model category for people over 40 because, we were informed, “handsome middle-aged men are big moneymakers in Portland.”
Since the overwhelming majority of the models that the agency signed were young women, we spent most of meeting discussing the extremely specific standards for female models:
“Women have to be 5’8 or taller, preferably taller than 5’10, but not too tall. They need to have good hair and good skin. If they are a little big it’s ok, they can lose weight. They should be young but look older. We don’t take anyone younger than 13.”
As a scout I would get paid twice as much if I scouted an international model. What does an international model look like? I asked.
“You’ll know when you find an international model…they’re kind of weird-looking,” the owner told me, and I was shown some headshots of international models that were now signed to the agency. “They might not even be someone you or I would call pretty. Just look for tall thin girls. Anyone who is tall and thin, you should scout.”
I looked through the photos of extremely thin white women with long hair. Can I scout plus size models? I asked, hopefully.
“Oh yes,” was the enthusiastic response all around ”if you can find them, they’re pure gold.” The owner then qualified this by telling me that I probably wouldn’t find one because the standards for plus sized models were even stricter than those of conventional models. “They have to be ten times more beautiful than a conventional model. They have to be curvy and gorgeous. They can’t just be…” he wrinkled his nose “lumpy. I know it sounds mean, but it’s just how it is.”
“If you look at these famous plus sized models,” he continued, and he spouted off a few names, which I pretended to recognize, “they have very unusual bodies. It is just hard to find a size 14 who is tall, an hourglass, and also has a beautiful face.”
To say that this newfound knowledge completely shattered me would be an exaggeration because it did make sense when I thought about it, but I was a bit surprised. I, along with millions of other girls, had thought that the recent plus-sized model movement was vivid proof that our country’s beauty standards were shifting and becoming more accepting of differences. I had posted tons of articles on my Facebook wall about the plus sized model “revolution” and the sudden realization that plus sized model beauty was just as impractical and out of reach, if not more so, than that of conventional models left me feeling a bit cheated. But, still, I was determined that I would scout one.
My actual job consisted of hanging out at malls or going to Portland Trail Blazers games and walking up to people who fit an extremely specific profile and then saying something along the lines of “Sorry to bother you, but I’m a model scout and I think you are JUST what my company is looking for!”
Sometimes it legitimately felt great to walk up to some random girl and tell her she was beautiful because I could tell it made her day, but usually it just felt kind of sleazy. I could tell that a few people thought I was scamming them, and honestly I couldn’t blame them. Also, I quickly learned that anyone who was truly surprised at being scouted was probably not model material. Most pretty women who are over 5’10 and thin and live in a city have been told they should model. It was all too often that I would walk up to someone and blurt out my usual pitch and have them respond with something like “oh, I know” or “well, I’ve been to a few casting calls already.” There was this part of me that really hated going up to gorgeous people and kissing their ass because they were pretty. The idea that being thin or beautiful or tall was inherently something a person should be rewarded for bothered me.
I also was realizing that the “ideal” model was harder to find than I could have imagined. Many of the girls I sent into the agency, who I personally thought were unbelievably beautiful, were rejected. They were too short, or too “ethnic,” or too fat or just not “moneymakers” which probably meant they were just too average. I scouted a few plus sized models and none of them were signed.
One week I had a meeting with the owner so we could talk about what he was looking for. “Look at this girl” he said. “She just came in last week. Killer body. Her face is eh…but killer body and good hair. We’ll book her with Nike. She’s a moneymaker.” He showed me a photo of a sullen girl in a bra and panties. She was rail thin and looked about fourteen. Then he showed me another girl.
“Now, this is our new international” he beamed. “Her hips are big, she needs to go down two sizes, but look at those cat eyes. If she can lose the weight…” The photo was of a redhead girl who looked to be about a size 10. My size.
The way that my employers spoke about people as if they were bags of money rather than human beings is, I guess, just standard of anyone in the industry. But it was starting to bother me. Primarily because it was having an effect on how I viewed the people around me. I couldn’t go anywhere without scouting, everyone was a potential paycheck. When I went out to dinner with my partner or out dancing with my friends, I would look for potential models. It sucks to constantly view the people around you this way.
The job was also, and most detrimentally, having an effect on how I viewed myself. Like thousands of other girls I had grown up hating my body and battling an eating disorder throughout my adolescence. At the age of 17, I had even sworn off fashion magazines (despite my love of fashion) because I realized that the images they contained were making me miserable. After years of therapy, medication, and, practice I had reached a point where I was accepting of my body and yet ever since I had started scouting I had escalated. Every time I heard my boss say that a girl had to lose weight, every time I saw a girl thinner than me get rejected for her size, it felt like a personal offense. One night I was getting drinks with another scout, a beautiful woman in her late 20s who was probably about a size 12, and she confessed that it bothered her, too. “I know that I don’t even think some of the girls I scout are good looking, but they’re the ones who are making money…so what does that make me?” she said, “It just makes me feel bad sometimes.”
After that night, I quit. It was time.
Tags: beauty, bodies, liz davidoff, model scout, models
Yeah, Plus-Size models can only be models if they’re hourglass and traditionally beautiful. Usually white and super-femme, too. You’ll not see many androgynous or ‘weird’ model faces in the plus-size game.
It’s… frustrating. The whole modelling industry is. I get you want the people showing your clothes to be attractive and to fit a certain look you’re going for, but I guess I don’t get why the physical side of it is so unhealthily restrictive.
If your clothes won’t look ‘right’ unless they’re shown on a very specific shape; if their shape will ‘distract’ from your clothes, maybe you just aren’t making very good clothes.
Also: if you want “walking clothes hangers” for your runway models, cut out the middleman and use a literal revolving clothes rack. If designing for more than one body type is too challenging for you, consider an artistic medium with fewer practical restrictions.
As with all things, the answer is “money.” Garments for the runway are made of customized luxury fabrics that cost the house anywhere from $300-$100 per yard. Grading up one size can mean an extra yard of fabric per garment. Every look consists of 2-5 garments. You can see how the math escalates quickly. Besides, the clothes are constructed over a matter of months, and the models are cast the week before the show. In the strictest sense, the clothes are monetarily more valuable than the models. It has nothing to do with the design and everything to do with cost of production.
In that case, models should be short.
HAHAHAHAHAHA YES IT IS TOTALLY COST OF PRODUCTION THAT IS THE MAIN FACTOR AS TO WHY MODELS LOOK THE WAY THEY DO.
Have you considered standup? Your shit is hilarious.
oh man! fascinating! this is one of those jobs that I would be waaaaaaaaaaaay too intimidated to apply for.
I felt that way too, but you’d be surprised how few qualifications I needed to get this particular job. The turnover was pretty high. -LD
I always like to the think the strangeness of the model culture/aesthetic is a result of gay men trying to select women who straight women will think look like the kind of women who are attractive to straight men. But then you have the Maxim/FHM type publications, so I don’t know.
I do really wonder how much these “standards” are based on actual marketing science, testing, and sales figures and how much it’s just antiquated values that have metastasized in the rancid environment of a small but incredibly self-important industry run by weird snobs. Fashion seems like one of those industries, like Hollywood, where everyone claims it’s all about the money but where a lot of basic good business practices have yet to be widely adopted.
Yep, it’s all the fault of gay men being such “weird snobs.” If only market research would consult straight men about the models they’d like to see, I’m sure we’d have healthy and realistic-looking body images in no time.
blammo
Sorry, 1st paragraph was theory 1, which I admit seems clearly wrong, and 2nd paragraph is theory 2, with no specific reference to gender/sexuality. I should have made that more clear. (I do think it’s interesting how models, widely implicated in enforcing toxic beauty standards, are mainly meant to be looked at by other women, but sorry for wording it that way.)
(ETA: Also the market research I’m implying needs to be done would ask WOMEN what they want to see.)
Thanks for the clarification. I definitely agree with you that there is more going on than just catering to some monolithic straight male gaze.
Isn’t it every profession’s goal to create an inward-looking discipline that can ward off external critics by telling them they just don’t understand!
“Most pretty women who are over 5’10 and thin and live in a city have been told they should model.” DIFFERENT PEOPLE HAVE SUCH DIFFERENT LIVES AND THAT IS REALLY SOMETHING
It is strange but true! I am not even that thin, I’m a size 10, but merely being 5’11” somehow means that I am interesting to these people? Whatever, it doesn’t really happen anymore, and I am so filled with self-loathing i never would say yes to something like that.
Yeah the disparity between “being told you should model” and “actually modeling” is probably pretty huge, especially from a scout perspective because you really go for quantity (which can result in telling 10 people an hour that they should model). At this point, I would honestly recommend that most people avoid model casting calls. Being rejected based on your looks is kind of harsh….no matter how you spin it. I occasionally scouted friends who were then rejected at the call, and they always told me it was a pretty horrible experience.
My mom was a theater actress in New York before I was born, and was regularly told at auditions that she was “so ugly she was almost cute,” and fully internalized that to the point that it indirectly fucked me up a little, as an echo of how much it affected her.
I’m 5’10”, size 8, live in a big city, and I’ve never, ever once been told I should model. I must be hideous.
/KIDDING! honest
I am 5’9″ and live in a city and am sort of weird-looking, so I have been scouted a couple of times, and worked (fruitlessly) with an agency for a year. Any scouting after that was basically just a reminder that “you are tall but still too fat, you size four monstrosity,” so, ehh.
But if the Toast wants follow-up stories on what that year was like I WILL TOTALLY PITCH ONE.
I would LOVE to read about that. But in the meantime, brb weeping at this nonsense- “you are tall but still too fat, you size four monstrosity”
I’m the shortest of all my siblings – five girls in total – and I’m 5’10”. When we all walk around together (the best is airports), no one ever approaches us for anything, but they point because we’re tall. But I like to think everyone is just intimidated by us because we look like a Tall Girl Gang and will eff you up.
That sounds so glam and awesome. The less glam version of this is my 5’4″ Gma, her four daughters (shortest 5’10”), and four granddaughters (shortest 5’9″) girl-ganging it up at the Mall of America. People got out of our way.
Ha, amazing! This is definitely appropriate: http://vimeo.com/60945501
There are zero valid reasons that the modeling industry should continue to exist. Kill it with fire.
Yes. Thank you.
but how else would i find out how clothes look on people, i never see that in my day to day life
The entire fashion industry is toxic and evil. Leggings and baggy tees for everyone! Or sci-fi jumpsuits of some kind!
I think you mean “speed-suit”. A speed-suit says to the world: “Look out! I know what I’m wearing for the rest of my life!”
“I look like Santa’s magic janitor.”
I like the idea of picking some pretty fabric and taking it to a tailor, who makes me some clothes that are comfortable and perfectly suited to me. They still do this in parts of the world, right? Lucky bastards.
Completely, totally a thing. Getting clothes made is one of the things I very much miss about living in West Africa.
This was super fascinating, thank you for sharing!
Thanks!
Does it sound braggy if I say someone scouted me one time? And it WAS WEIRD. First of all I was with my friends playing in a leaf pile and he walked across this big field to only ask me and that was uncomfortable. And I felt like it was a thing that might be about murder. I was flattered, but scared I might be dumb if I went there and it would turn out to be a basement full of the severed limbs of other brown haired women with blue eyes? Its probably better if a woman asks.
Second I’m in between 5’6″ and 5’7″, and I know I ain’t tall enough. I’m pretty sure it was because I was doing a thing where I’d put my very long hair into a ponytail and then braid the ponytail into many braids, plus I have no boobs so that makes me look skinnier than I am.
Anyway, it was only the ONE TIME in a not very fancy city. And now I live in the city of pretty people who live on tofu and juice and no one asks me to model anything. I guess I missed my chance to claw my way up from Miss Middle Sized MA Town JC Penny model to supermodel.
I was one time “Scouted” by a guy in an Israeli train station who insisted that I come to the location alone so he could “paint my portrait for rich people” which I interpreted as actually meaning “collect my limbs in jars”. But there was also a pretty heinous language barrier.
I’ve never been approached by a model scout, but whenever random people approach me in a non-social setting (e.g. grocery shopping, walking down the street) I always assume they’re looking for murder victims.
They are! It’s a safe assumption! They want “something” and it’s probably murder. I’ve seen TV- I know there are billions of serial killers out there.
I’m also 5’6″, and used to get “scouted” all the time when I was a teenager. (I’m using the scare quotes because I’m pretty sure that wasn’t actually what was happening.) I also used to have people ask me to pose for photos or drawings or paintings all the fucking time, especially in the first couple of years of college. I’m pretty okay looking, but it always made me feel like I must look like an alien. Not like “you’re pretty,” but like “you’re interesting to look at,” which really doesn’t come across as a compliment.
I haven’t had that happen nearly as often, but multiple people (who I knew, who do paint) have said they wanted to paint my portrait because my face is so…interesting? Or painting-y? I didn’t really know how to interpret it, either.
The creepiest was this guy whose studio my creative writing workshop visited during grad school who called my prof later and asked him to ask me to pose for him. You guessed it: naked. Skeeved me out for a very long time.
One night at around 3:00 AM in 2007 while I was reading Wiki entries on old seasons of ANTM, I had a sudden realization that my brother could be a model and (with his permission) put pics of him on models.com the next day. He was signed by an agency the following day and moved to New York within weeks. He worked as a model from 2007-2011, when he retired as a washed-up old man of 23. I accompanied him to a casting for a Target ad once when I went to visit him in NY. I am 5’8″ and thin by regular people standards, and that afternoon I felt like a stumpy dwarf who had mistakenly wandered into Rivendell.
I hope you got a cut!
That’s amazing. 23 is old in model world for men, too, not just women? (Obviously with the exception of Portland.)
Isn't it every profession's goal to create an inward-looking discipline that can ward off external critics by telling them they just don't understand!
I like the idea of picking some pretty fabric and taking it to a tailor, who makes me some clothes that are comfortable and perfectly suited to me. They still do this in parts of the world, right? Lucky bastards.
“handsome middle-aged men are big moneymakers in Portland” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZqB5R8afjw
"I look like Santa's magic janitor."
I’m late to the party, but this was fascinating! I’d actually love to do this but I don’t think I’m a good enough judge of height/weight, although “taller than me” could be enough.
The point is that every woman wants to feel beautiful. But understanding that your beauty may not sell a product means you need to get over being so needy of affection. Models are being hired for a job strictly on appearance and not their bubbly nice persona. Make up, hair and styling can make a world of difference in the face. I have worked for agencies too for the last 10 years. Over weight models are recognized as unhealthy and can be a turn off the the average consumer. A fit curvy girl about size 10 will look like a size 12-14 on a camera and yes there is a large market for over weight women in America only, but definitely not internationally. In the end the clothes need to look shapely like she is fit with thick genes, not unhealthy and over weight/ American. Not everyone can be a model, but everyone hates the industry because it doesn’t tell everyone they are beautiful and women hate that. Ask a man… they will admit to you that there are ugly women and pretty women. Point blank and ratio of unattractive is higher than to society idea of “pretty”. The market supplies the demand of what the general public responds to and that is numbers and sales of different looks. The demand is created by the public. When is the last time you saw an ugly face model selling makeup and said…oh it doesn’t look good on her, but it will look better on me. Never. No one likes to be told they unattractive, but women need to stop being so sensitive because its not pointed at you. Its a business.
And that, my dears is the problem in a nutshell. Any of us size 12 or ( god forbid) over, are clearly overweight and unhealthy, plus overly sensitive to the criticisms of these lovely ad. people who only have the nation’s good at heart ….
23 is quite young for a male model.
Is a jumpsuit not a workwear version of a onesie? Truly the ideal garment (I would wear the hell out of a coppery metallic jumpsuit if I found one. Wouldn't care how it looked on me, would just feel awesome).