Sitting Pretty

When I can find the work, I freelance as a model.

The unlikelihood of this fact is hard to stress without showing a photograph or otherwise betraying what I look like, but suffice to say I am pretty well the polar opposite of conventional mainstream professional models. I’m twelve inches too short and fifty pounds too heavy and haven’t a glamorous bone in my body. I’m not even like one of those curvy modern pinup models who, despite not having the typical ‘model’ body type, have a certain appeal by the way they more or less radiate confidence. Their comfort in their own skin gives them a powerful sex appeal that defies the skewed body-image of popular culture. (Fun fact: 95% of fashion models have that tall, low-body-fat, willowy figure that really occurs in less than 5% of the Western female population.)

But I am not one of these women. I haven’t got an ounce of self-confidence and my self-image is pretty shitty. (The only feature I consistently like about myself is my eyes. Everything else is subject to ruthless self-depreciation.) I'm excessively concerned with how I look compared with women I find attractive, who are not, incidentally, the willowy tall model types and actually much closer to my own body type. I wouldn't call myself vain, but my level of obsessive paranoia borders on complete neurosis. I've also got a rather rampagingly obvious body dysmorphic disorder going on because I am insanely attracted to women with a body type identical to mine and can't find a single thing about them not to like, but see nothing but faults in myself. It's only when it's on me that an otherwise appealing trait becomes unattractive. I'm perfectly aware of the dissonance but I'm still in the position of being put off by my own body but helplessly smitten with women who look exactly like me. As far as indicators of body dysmorphism go, there could not possibly be a bigger red flag waving around. All that can be said in my favour is that I'm well aware of what's going on and am usually able to stop it from getting totally out of hand. (In other words, the condition is severe enough that I hate my body but I'm aware of it enough to know it's all in my head and not do anything drastic about it.)

So I’m not the natural first choice as a model. But I do it anyway and enjoy it immensely when I can find the work, even though I’m aware I basically represent a very small niche appeal demographic. I actually have a better opinion of myself in photos than I do in the mirror, even though I know there’s no actual logic behind thinking this way. I attribute it to a combination of flattering but deceptive camera angles and superfluous post-editing. As well as not being generally inclined to making a lot of sense.

I manage to conceal my poor self-image quite well. I trick everybody from makeup artists to viewers into believing that I’m much more comfortable with myself than I actually am by surprisingly effectively pretending to have way more self-confidence than I really do. It’s an act—a good one, but still an act. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m basically a 200-pound bag of insecurity and body-image issues with an inexplicable fondness for sitting in front of a camera. I’ll even pose nude with an apparent ease and nonchalance that is entirely incongruous with the way I view myself.

I imagine it’s a fortuitous of a lack of studio mirrors and the promise of a paycheck. My tolerance threshold skyrockets if I know I’m going to get paid for it—which is how I manage to work where I do for a day-job without killing anybody. I’m not saying it’s very healthy (it kind of makes me sound a bit like a hooker, thinking about it), I’m just saying that’s kind of how it works.

Even without the burden of a non-commercial body type and a very dim view of myself, I’m still not the obvious first choice for a model. The foremost problem is that I’m physically awkward and so badly uncoordinated that total strangers often think I’m drunk or have an inner ear disorder. This is hard enough to accommodate day-to-day—in the confined space of a studio with hazards like backdrops, props, and lights and under the watchful eye of thousands of dollars in camera equipment, it’s a large insurance claim waiting to happen. Heaven forbid I have to sit on a chair or a dais or something. High heels are a perennial hazard and keeping track of all four of my limbs and my surroundings and the camera is just a little short of rocket science. Really, I might as well save everybody the time and energy by giving myself two black eyes and then driving home.

I’m also not completely comfortable wearing makeup. Well, I am now but I didn’t start wearing it until I was in my 20s so I lack the general familiarity and comfort with it that most women my age have. If I didn’t spend my spare time sitting in front of cameras this wouldn’t be an issue, but most studio gigs require makeup and I’m unhelpfully ill-at-ease wearing it because I’m so unused to it.

Part of the problem is the sheer amount slathered on. Those studio lights are unforgiving and to show up on camera requires a lot of makeup. It’s applied as thick as spackle and not a great deal easier to wear. It requires layers and layers of application and I can feel the weight of every brushstroke on my face. I constantly have to be reminded not to rub my face, and when I inevitably forget not to I annoy everyone by having to stop everything to be touched up. If I have to wear false eyelashes, forget it. (Lucky for me my eyelashes are quite long and show up easily on camera, so I don’t need them very often.) I don’t know how women wear those as a matter of routine—it’s impossible to ignore them. And I’ve only worn the ones that are the same length as my real lashes. If I had to wear those super-long Lady Gaga (or drag queen) eyelashes, I’d probably just scratch my eyelids right off. They’re the first things to go as soon as I get the okay to remove the makeup.

Because I have to wear way more makeup than I’m used to wearing on my own, I can’t do it myself and have to sit for a professional for much longer than I can easily tolerate. I’m a twitchy, fidgety person most of the time anyway so it’s asking a lot for me to sit still while someone paints me like a pantomime dame. And because I have to force myself to sit still, I end up thinking about it, and thinking about it makes it harder to sit still. I usually end up twitching like I have freaking Tourette’s and the whole process takes twice as long as it should. Quite understandably, makeup artists don’t like me very much.

Despite all this, I still take gigs wherever I can and have fun doing it. Once in front of the camera I feel quite natural and chatty so everybody quickly forgets that I’m playing against type, am a bodily risk to the studio, and took over an hour to make up.

So I get to have some fun, get a little confidence boost, and get paid all in the same afternoon. I get a lot more input at my shoots than is customary mostly because I’m not a standard model and there isn’t a mainstream audience to appease or an ‘image’ to maintain. Because I’m not normal, nothing about the finished product has to be a certain way so it’s okay to do much more experimenting than would otherwise be allowed. Which is what makes it enjoyable. If I had to play by someone else’s rules, I doubt I’d like it as much.

My crippling self-consciousness doesn’t show through in pictures, and thank goodness for that because a model intensely preoccupied with her the size of her thighs isn’t an attractive image. Actually, I’m not sure if appearing so comfortable in my own skin is a charade or if it’s the genuine result of temporarily—briefly—managing to shed all of my hangups.

Either way, there’s something strangely and gratifyingly liberating about being able to make myself appear in a much different light than I do in the real world. Sometimes I think that if it comes so easily to me in front of the camera, then maybe it’s possible to do it for real.

But hey, one step at a time.

I’m still not used to wearing the false lashes yet. An entirely new self-image will take a few fittings.