We were stuck in a box together for three days – a windowless room with an oblong glass table and white chairs covered in orange fabric that made marks on your legs if you sat on them for too long. Along the walls hung racks of short dresses made from dupioni silk, poly chiffon, and crepe back satin. These are fabrics. I know these things because I’ve been modeling too long. I know how to tailor dresses nip by nip because that is my job. I do this thing all of the time. I have been rendered a body and not much else.
She was not the type that normally did work like this. She was a new face at a reputable agency where the girls were routinely broke and always beautiful. Nothing but the best job was good enough, but the best comes few and far between until you really make it. I lived somewhere on the other end of that spectrum; making my living doing jobs that made me want to kill myself, but paid for a nice apartment and Margiela boots.
She was beautiful, really. Stunning and ethereal. The type of beauty that made you think that this person was made solely to be put on display, nothing more. Any sort of manual labor was out of the question if it were to threaten the exterior of this living doll. Any sort of job that required higher brain functioning seemed like a waste of her good looks. These girls live in bell jars.
Her eyebrows arched chaotically, stretching in inch-wide strips above her eyes, which were large and glassy and flanked by thick, dark lashes. Her hair was that dishwater blonde, gray and unassuming, untouched by chemicals but fragile and broken from photo shoots and probably not eating enough.
She was Russian, of course, and thin as a whip. So thin, in fact, that I was incapable of any jealousy at all, because there was no possible way to ever achieve those avian bones, no matter how little I ate.
Her extreme thinness lent her hands a Tolkien quality. They were strange things that looked too big for her body because her body was so absurdly small. Her hands were long and bony things, always flushed with the appearance of having just come in from the freezing cold.
When we weren’t busy zipping each other into skin-tight dresses, we sat across from each other at the conference table. Sometimes in silence, sometimes sharing a joke. Though I’m not sure if all of my comments really translated that well considering her language barrier despite what her soft and endearing giggles might have lead me to believe.
In between meetings, she drew. I listened to the soft scribbling of her pen on paper, the rhythmic scrapes of her drawing two-dimensional butterflies and cigarette cartons.
She told me of her university plans and how she graduated high school “with the highest marks.” I liked how she called them “marks” and the way she nodded and shied away, quietly proud of herself in a world where no one cares what your “marks” actually were. Her plan was to make money modeling and go back to school. I rooted for her in a way I usually reserve for cousins or other people I am indebted to because of love or blood. And when she told me she was shooting for Vogue the next day, I begrudged her nothing. I rooted for her because she was sweet and beguiling, young and full of possibility.
***
Note: Photo by Eric Ray Davidson.
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