Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling (12 page)

I stood in front of the mirror and looked at, really looked at my body, like for the first time in, like, years. I faced it. I had to see my body. [It was] the only way I could do it [modeling]. I learned to model in front of a mirror.

By making peace with her body, Joelle could look at herself in the mirror and not be distracted by any perceived imperfections caused by her fatness. Instead, she worked with the mirror to find the poses that were the most flattering for her body. She went from avoiding the mirror to relying on it to help her develop her modeling skills.

According to an agent with twenty-five years of experience, this effective communication with the body is contingent on a model “being happy with whatever size she is in.” This requires a model to be comfortable with her body and a plus-size model to be comfortable with her fat. Nervousness or body insecurity can hamper affective labor. Lea, a size sixteen catalog print and showroom model and accomplished theatrical performer, confided that bodily insecurity interfered with a photo shoot. “Every time I was posing, I kept thinking about my sausage arms,” she acknowledged. “I briefed the photographer about them [her arms], but I was still worried the retouching wouldn’t be enough.” Lea’s fixation on her arms limited her choice of poses, and, ultimately, took away her ability to connect with the camera. Even as someone with an extensive theatrical background, she felt awkward in this particular spotlight. Without dialog or a song to sing to distract attention away from her body, Lea found herself more vulnerable in front of the
camera than on the Broadway stage. Her arm insecurity hampered her performance and, ultimately, strained her working relationship with the photographer, who later disclosed to me her annoyance over Lea’s insistent worry.

A model cannot easily hide this bodily discomfort. It is displayed in how she moves and behaves in front of clients. One model confessed that she bites her nails, so she never poses with her hands close to her face in order to make them less visible. Another awoke the morning of a casting with a large pimple on her chin. She tried to reduce the swelling with ice and then carefully applied concealer to make the imperfection less noticeable. At the casting, she was self-conscious about her face. She knew that the casting did not go well. “I bombed that one [the casting],” she explained. “I was so preoccupied by that zit that I forgot how to model.” While the model will never know exactly why she was not hired for that particular job, she suspected it was due to an added level of personal discomfort caused by her temporary flaw.

Plus-size models, in particular, face the additional challenge of appearing confident while possessing a non-normative body in fashion. Randa, a size ten/twelve commercial print model, experienced this when working alongside a straight-size model at a photo shoot:

Something was different. They [the production staff] treated me different. The photographer called her [the straight-sized model] “Love” but I was “you in the blue dress.” I think it was because of my size . . . At the fitting, there wasn’t much to choose from. She [the straight-size model] had a whole rack [of clothes]. They didn’t seem prepared for someone my size. They didn’t seem to care. They put more effort into her look than my look.

Posing side-by-side with a straight-size model made Randa more self-conscious about her body. She felt out of place and re-stigmatized because of her fat. While plus-size models try to expand the definition of beauty in fashion, experiences like Randa’s expose how deeply the thin ideal is entrenched within fashion.

While a model may camouflage her insecurity at an in-person casting, photographs ultimately reveal a model’s level of comfort with her body. To illustrate, an agent showed me the proofs from a recent photo shoot of a prospective model:

Some people, they’re just beautiful but don’t photograph well. Here’s the perfect example. This girl is so beautiful. She is plus-size. Adorable, gorgeous, but I really don’t like the pictures. She was nervous. She did not do a good job.

The agent gave a vague critique of the photographs, but this was because elements of affective labor can be indescribable. As he discerned from the photographs, this model did not engage in effective affective labor because he did not see any sparkle in her eyes. Her eyes were, as he described, “dead.” In the end, the agent did not waste time determining the source of this model’s failure to produce “good” pictures and refused to work with her.

Modeling agents receive thousands of submissions a year from hopeful models seeking their representation, and they scour through each and every snapshot received in the mail or online through the agency website. Some agencies even hold regular open calls. In order to get through all of these prospective models, modeling agents make instantaneous decisions based on a glance at a photograph. That is why it is important for the model to be able to emote well in pictures. A single image reveals her skills at affective labor.

At an agency open call, I had my first glimpse at what it felt to be “just a body.” The agent evaluated my potential to model based only on a snapshot, without a word exchanged. I had wanted to talk with her and demonstrate my outgoing personality which, I presumed, would translate well into pictures, but that was an unnecessary part of the audition process. Agents primarily judge models on the basis of a picture.

Shocked by the impersonal nature of that open call, I looked forward to a scheduled meeting with the director at another agency. Surely, I would be able to demonstrate my interpersonal skills during a face-to-face meeting. Needless to say, this peculiar contradiction confronted me again. As I entered the agent’s office, he immediately offered this judgment, “You’re cute and have a good personality.” Without words exchanged beyond a simple salutation, the agent evaluated my personality, again, simply based on my physical appearance in a photograph.

Sociologist Elizabeth Wissinger shares a similar account of a young model accompanied by her mother seeking representation at a New York modeling agency:

An agent came out to meet them, and, using a Polaroid camera, shot a picture of the girl, right there, in the lobby. In a moment, it was done, and, after a very brief exchange with the agent, mother and daughter headed for the elevator and their next appointment, or perhaps this girl’s big break . . . The fact that it took the agent only a few seconds with a Polaroid camera to evaluate this model, speaks volumes about the criteria for obtaining work in the industry, and what the agencies look for in terms of standards of appearance and behavior. There was no need to actually speak to the girl.
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If an agent does not see a “spark” of affective labor in that photograph, the prospective model will be passed over for the next snapshot in the towering pile or the next anxious body waiting in the lobby. While it is possible to cultivate this energy over time with increased levels of confidence, if a model does not have what could be described as “star quality,” she will not get her proverbial foot in the door.

Models require a great deal of emotional labor to charm clients while being scrutinized by them, as well as to juggle an unpredictable schedule
of castings, go-sees, and fittings. During the course of my fieldwork, the impersonal nature of castings struck me. At a casting for a runway show, I walked into the room to find a three-person panel. Without the customary exchange of greeting, one on the panel ordered, “Straight walk twice, no turns. Go!” On cue, the music started and I began my walk down an imaginary runway. The cold reception from the panel left me a bit stunned and befuddled, so, consequently, I forgot to monitor my facial expression while my hips were swinging to the rhythm of the music. I failed to maintain my composure given an unexpected interaction with casting. I let my emotions get the better of me. I did not get the job.

At another casting, I met Wendy, a size eighteen model who had been working in runway and showroom for a women’s plus-size clothing store. She recounted to me her earlier run-in at a casting that same morning:

I got there fifteen minutes early, so I stuck my head in the door and asked if I could go in. One of the casting directors barked back at me, “We will start at noon.” But I had asked the director of the show if I could come by earlier because I had this casting and he said yes. I waited until noon and stuck my head in again, and they said they were not ready. As I was sitting there I could hear the casting director complaining, “Don’t these models know that noon means noon.” I was so mad that I left without auditioning. I pride myself on being punctual.

Unfortunately, Wendy was not able to rein in her feelings for the casting, but the comments she overheard from the casting director revealed a lopsided opportunity structure. Models aim to please clients and casting directors, i.e., to be voiceless, smiling bodies.

Besides the occasional chilling experience at castings, plus-size models also negotiate any unexpected demands that emerge. When I met Dana, a size sixteen model, she struggled with a schedule filled with multiple rehearsals for an upcoming runway show, difficult directors, and hidden costs for walking the runway. Exasperated, Dana explained, “I have to sell forty-dollar tickets to a [runway] show that I am not being paid
for, and he [the director] won’t return my damn calls.” Plus-size models inhabit a low-status niche in fashion. Consequently, fashion directors often require them to sell tickets for runway shows that they participate in. Dana arrived to a casting heavily burdened by these responsibilities (as well as those of a mother to a rambunctious toddler) but, for the sake of her career, she let her frustration pass before entering the audition room. “I’m a professional. I do my job,” Dana told me before heading into the casting room. Always engaged in emotional labor, models must leave negative attitudes and low energy at the door in order to perform and impress clients and casting directors.

Another significant component of emotional labor is confidence. This did not mean that these women have perfect body images. In an interview with
PLUS Model Magazine
, Angellika, who had worked in the industry for more than a decade and was the first plus-size model inducted into the Modeling Hall of Fame, revealed, “Do I have things I don’t like on my body? Of course [stomach] but I enhance everything else about myself and roll with the punches.”
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Likewise, Joelle vented about a surmounting social pressure she faced to be a modern-day body ambassador brimming with self-confidence:

People always expect us to be on and confident, but everyone has some sort of insecurity. I still get nervous today when I’m going to a casting. Who will be there? What will they ask me to do? What will I have to wear? I’m like any woman, and nothing brings out a girl’s insecurity like a bathing suit. I won’t wear it in public, but, on a closed set for a job, I’ll do it. I’ll be brave.

These models are told to “work it” by embracing their bodies and embodying confidence; however, they work in a professional environment that aims for physical perfection and criticizes those bodies that fail to measure up.

Models engage in the most taxing form of emotional labor when they try to maintain composure while receiving criticism, some of which can
be unwarranted and destructive. Early in her career, Janice, a size sixteen/eighteen commercial print and fit model, signed with an agent at an agency specializing in plus-size models:

She [the agent] told me to change my hair, weight. She even suggested I get a chin implant! . . . She’d call me at all hours, in the middle of the night . . . After a casting, she’d call me to tell me what the client said, like, “She’s not pretty enough.” Like that helps!

Since a model depends on her agent to find her work and negotiate with clients on her behalf, she often finds herself in a predicament to appease her agent’s demands. Under an exclusive contract with this agent, Janice suffered the verbal abuse. Janice acknowledged that her body was not the one typically celebrated in American culture, but to have her agent, whom she believed would be her mentor in the field, was discouraging. “She [the agent] played me,” Janice vented. Since then, she has been wary of exclusive contracts with agencies.

A model endures the careful management of her feelings and strain to her self-esteem in order to work from day to day, client to client. Most often, though, these models never find out why they were not cast for a particular job. When one model asked her booker the outcome of a casting, she was told, in vague terms that the client “went in another direction.” Stephanie explained, “I’m constantly told, ‘You’re too big or small.’ It ain’t easy to hear. That’s the business. I chose to do this so I have to live with it.” Despite this uncertainty, they persist from one casting to the next in hopes of booking work. Their persistence, despite this unknown, is a key component of their emotional labor.

Models spend a majority of their time engaged in physical labor to keep their bodies camera-ready. A model prepares her body for the performance of modeling. As post-structuralist feminist philosopher Judith
Butler argues, gender is a performative accomplishment, i.e., an identity constructed through daily actions and use of the body that culminates in an impression of one’s gender.
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In “doing gender,” individuals act at the risk of assessment, where others will hold them accountable for their behavior.
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Here, the plus-size model, as a gendered woman, is under considerable cultural pressure to “do looks.” Additionally, she is directed by her agency to give a specific gendered performance that conveys the impression that she is, indeed, a model. Her job is to use her body to strike the right pose and sell a garment for a client. In order to effectively do so, a model regulates and disciplines her body. By way of toning and shaping her body through diet and exercise or artificial enhancements, the model prepares her body for the needs of clients. These performative acts of a model may appear to be the result of personal choice, but they work within the confines of an existing cultural structure that awards compliance to a constructed image of plus-size beauty.