Of Meat Markets and Monstrous Men

[rainy_lilac at yahoo.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:

> OK, now that Suzanne has Spoken, I feel brave enough to mention the 
bit I chopped out of my previous post for fear of (a) undermining the 
point I was making, and (b) appearing arrogant.  


I want to be really clear that I almost didn't make my post because I 
feared that I would appear "arrogant". 

Yeah, I am a pretty girl who is now pushing forty and rather glad of 
it. I prefer striking people as "smart" and do what I can to 
encourage that. I still strike people as being very pretty, but it 
seems to be counting against me less now that I have put on a few 
years and some wisdom. If you met me you would not necessarily think 
this was such a big deal.

When I was younger, though, I had that dewy-eyed, naive, just-sprang-
out-of-a-fairy-tale look which, back when the modelling industry was 
very big on Brooke Shields for all of the wrong reasons, enabled me 
to get into the industry. (I was later knocked out of it because I am 
simply not tall enough to compete.) 

Frankly the experience netted me mainly the very unpleasant 
attentions of (overt and covert) pedophiles, a lot of serious damage 
to my self-esteem, and the extreme hostility of many, many wicked 
step-mother types. I remember very clearly getting the message that 
how ever much I suffered, I deserved it, and lots of people would be 
secretly glad. Back then I was in fact very naive and defenseless and 
simply did not have the emotional equipment to protect myself. I had 
the dubious gift of a face that showed in great fragile clarity 
everything that I was feeling, and the vultures pounced on that and 
had a great lunch at my expense.

It sucked guys.

I do not recommend modelling as a career to anyone. I don't know 
ANYONE who has been made happy by it. I was very, very glad to have 
quit early in the game-- though I have to say that if I had met the 
height requirement, I probably would have gone ahead with it just out 
of fear. The money was good and I didn't have a good sense of my 
other options-- having that option taken away from me forced me to 
look toward other things, like college. Like my writing. 

The only kind of modelling that is relatively free of exploitation, 
in my opinion, is doing commercials (where they really prefer people 
who look "ordinary", though you are still expected to be "attractive"-
- all-American young mother types do very well), or modelling "parts" 
(feet, hands, even ears!), or doing voice-overs ($300 a hour, harder 
work than you would think), etc. It isn't necessarily all bad. But 
the fashion model scene-- Oh God, you do not know how awful it is, 
and how many really young girls are just sucked up into it and used 
like dirt rags. 

My Two Knuts,

Suzanne, Nobody's Fool