I can’t remember names anymore. I meet people all day long. Touching me. Judging me. Shaking my hand. This is my job.
The people running the show today are people I’ve known for years. Still, I don’t know any of their names. They know my life and we’ve had conversations many times but when I’m pressed to call out their names in the room I’m left with, “Hey, hey. Sweetie!”
I talk with a brunette with pink lips that I know from up north and we chat about my world and her cousin and I can’t for the life of me remember her name. I feel terrible but continue to talk animatedly.
I can’t remember anything anymore. My brain has been rewired to accommodate the nothingness it requires. Synapses try to connect, but only halfheartedly. Why bother? Someone’s just going to come over and dress me, come over and tie my shoelaces, come over and tell me where I’m supposed to be, come over and point to the boxed lunches. I am twenty-five and I am treated like a first grader. Fucking kill me.
So how can you expect me to know your name? I don’t have to know anything. In fact, not knowing anything is preferable. My opinion never matters so why have an informed one. Words fall out of my mouth, irrelevant. Consequently, names fall by the wayside.
I’ve got faces down for the most part. Even then, faces can be hard. I recognize beauty or weirdness or bleached blonde hair. The nondescripts come in and out of my vision and leave no trace of their existence or of their brief imprint on my brain.
I remember only the memorable. In terms of symmetry and aesthetic value, of course.
I am like a shortsighted baby.
Our show is in a children’s museum in San Diego. I flew back from New York yesterday. Three thousand miles in the air. Three hundred on the ground.
I sit on the floor. I eat a boxed lunch that is technically a boxed dinner while sitting on the same floor. Dirty carpets that, under normal circumstances, I would never dream of placing my body on become a lounging facility. I willingly remove myself from my own “real person” ethics.
It’s the usual. Turkey Sandwich. Chicken Salad Sandwich. Tuna Sandwich. Roast Beef Sandwich. Vegetarian Sandwich. Plus one fruit. Apple, most likely. Banana, maybe. The requisite chips. Salt and vinegar. Generic potato. Bar-b-que. The girls swap and trade their chips. Some girls throw them away. This is what I do. I don’t eat the pasta salad either, even though I know it’s good. It’s covered in basil pesto and dripping with slivers of sundried tomato. Of course it’s good. But good doesn’t matter anymore. Good is irrelevant unless used within the term “good for you” or “good for your health” which is just code for not gaining weight.
There are cookies, always cookies. Just another thing I don’t eat. Chocolate chips, sugar, fat, starch, gluten, butter, flour. You hear, “Hmmm…those pants are kind of snug in the back” enough times and you give up cookies for good. I used to love cookies. I used to make them and eat the batter off the spoon and out of the fridge, cold and hard. I used to eat them hot and then lukewarm and then eat them cold the next day. Now I don’t touch them.
I go to Ralphs to buy hummus and LoCarb pita bread even though it contains wheat and I’m not supposed to eat wheat anymore. It’s not because I have celiac disease or whatever that wheat allergy is called; I just wanted to see if it made a difference. Some DJ told me that he and his girlfriend gave up wheat, dairy, and sugar. They go to some homeopathic nutritionist back east. The DJ said it changed his life. I thought I’d give it a go. So now I don’t eat wheat, but it’s not for any real purpose or reason.
A few of the new girls talk about Bauhaus. This never happens. They’re fresh off the boat and probably from New York. Young. Still concerned with being interesting. The rest of the girls, by and large, have given up on all of that. It’s gold digging and boring self-interested reports about boyfriends and work and casting sessions and auditions and whether or not you did that job last week and whether or not your agent is actually working for you and if you should just try a different market like South Africa or Australia. Boring. Eventually they’ll all just have the babies of rich men and give up on their dreams, if they were lucky enough to have dreams to begin with. Even the smart girls. It’ll happen to them, too. We’re useless after this job and we all slide the slippery slope to the LCD. Lowest common dominator.
The girl with the pink lips comes and gets me, smiles and grabs my arm, putting me in line with a group of girls with long legs and the same makeup.
“Good luck!” she says.
Thanks, sweetie.
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You paint such a glowing picture! If only I wasn’t a 6’6 hairy man-child, I’d totally want to be a model.
It’s amazing more models don’t have serious problems. Is there a high percentage of depression or bipolarity in the industry? Making dreams come true doesn’t seem to be a common by-product of the job.
This is fucking brilliant and hilarious and sadly true.
Sheez. I could barely get past the first half of this, because you painted yourself as a spoiled, entitled, narcissist.
In business and in life, I determine a lot about a person, based on the way they treat the true “lowest common denominator” (service employees, subordinates, pink lipped ladies, etc.). I suppose I value empathy. We place an implicate value on individuals via our interaction with them. Calling someone “Hey you”, lets them know what you think of them (not much). Similarly, most companies preach the use of external/internal customer philosophy, where building relationships with “unimportant” members of your environment is a habit of effective people.
“We’re useless after this job and we all slide the slippery slope to the LCD.”
[sigh] Yep, there’s absolutely no place for incredibly hot, smart women in this world. Well… except for EVERY industry imaginable. How clichéd and stereotypical can you get?
I usually enjoy the writing here, including yours, Jenny; but unless the goal was to make me jeer and roll my eyes, this attempt went unsuccessful. It might be that you decided to broadcast two attitudes that I despise. Keep writing, I’ll continue to read.
Dear Scott,
I’m afraid you misread. The LCD I was referring to was not the “pink lipped lady” it was that of the usually true stereotype of the old model with no education who has nothing to fall back on but a rich man and some child support. In fact, I respect the people doing the production end of my job greatly and am hugely aware that my job is comparatively ridiculous and it is hard for me to accept payment for literally walking. My referring to “Sweetie” was not as a “Hey you” in the sense that the pink lipped lady is a subordinate. Not at all. Models are the subordinates. What I am talking about in this whole piece is the fact that I am incredibly embarrassed that a byproduct of this job has been almost a required attention deficit disorder, an inability to absorb everything around you because there’s just an overwhelming amount of it.
I am afraid you misinterpreted my work and I would urge you to go back over it. I am the last person to get on a high horse about my job. I am a huge naysayer of my kind, and this is why I write about it the way I do.
I would apologize that I offended, but I cannot, because your interpretation was not at all what I meant. Keep reading and thanks.
Daniel,
There could be a market for you, my friend. I’ve seen someone at a costume shoot that used to be some sort of football player and he was doing a fine job pretending he was a sword-wielding, gigantic knight in each shot. Don’t give up hope now – there’s so much life to live!
What I find most interesting about modeling is that it simultaneously has the ability to tear you down to pieces and then put you on an impossible pedestal. It all depends on how well you’re doing, what people say to you on any give day. It builds really thick skin, but even under that I – speaking for myself – admit to weakening to some serious insecurities. It’s a Catch 22. All jobs are difficult. This one is difficult and exceptionally weird.
Thanks for reading.
if it’s one thing you do amazingly well jenny, is write about modeling and make it a complete double edged sword. it comes across really well and very poignant in your entries.
thanks god i have no semblance or possibility of modeling! or good looks! =) give me a bass for the band, put me in the back in the shadows, it’s easier there…
Thanks, adelsig. Much appreciated.
amazing read, again.