This Year's Model: Fashion, Media, and the Making of Glamour

372 Pages·3.384 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Wissinger

This Year’s Model
This page intentionally left blank
This Year’s Model
Fashion, Media, and the Making of Glamour
Elizabeth A. Wissinger
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2015 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
ISBN: 978-0-8147-9418-0 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-4798-6477-5 (paperback)
For Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data, please contact the
Library of Congress.
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
This book is dedicated to Patrick and Cassielle Campi.
Patrick—thank you for making it possible.
Cassielle—thank you for keeping it real.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Glamour Labor 1
1. Supermodels of the World: Living the Life 35
2. The Runway: Step into the Room Like It’s a Catwalk 59
3. The Photo Shoot: Strike a Pose — T here’s Nothing to It 80
4. Cover Girl: Managing the Model Body 108
5. The Fashionable Ideal: Looking Like a Model 141
6. The Job: Nice Work If You Can Get It 162
7. Scouting: The Hunger for New Faces 185
8. Black-Black-Black: How Race Is Read 216
9. Touch- Ups: Making the Model Better 243
Conclusion: The Affective Turn 267

Appendix: A Chronology of Modeling in the Media, 1980 – 2010 279
Notes 283
Index 339
About the Author 353
vii
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
“You should be a model.” During my teenaged suburban youth, living
on the outskirts of New York City, I heard it often enough to strongly
consider it. Modeling represented a short-circuit escape from the sti-
fling hell of adolescence into instant womanhood and an indisputable
confirmation of one’s beauty, legitimacy, and worth. I sincerely believed
models had few self-doubts and were readily accepted by other people
and that they were supremely self-confident and had high self-esteem,
qualities I knew I sorely lacked.
I felt the first pull toward modeling when I was twelve. My junior
high choral group’s photo had appeared in the town newspaper, and a
local photographer called my home to ask if I wanted to be a model.
Would I! I could barely contain my excitement as I answered his ques-
tions. In my naiveté, I thought I had been discovered, that my chance
for escape was at hand. Sensing something was up, my mother inter-
vened, and through careful questioning of her own discovered that he
wanted to shoot lingerie on little girls. I protested but eventually agreed
that maybe this wasn’t the break I’d been looking for.
Once awakened to the dream of modeling, I had to live with it. I car-
ried it into high school; it seemed that every girl over 5'7" was hung up
on the same idea. My friend Diane was not model pretty. She was blond
and slim, however, and her height matched the magic number, so she
felt the pull of modeling even more than I (at 5'6", I was beginning to
wonder if I would ever be tall enough). We talked about it sometimes
during freshman biology lab, when things were slow. We dissected frogs
and discussed sending photos to agencies in nearby New York City. We
drew amoebas and wondered whether we had it, whatever “it” was that
won an agency contract. We diagramed ecosystems and dreamed of a
different life.
Diane and I were acutely aware of one problem, however: our weight.
We were both normal girls by medical standards, but everybody knew
normal-weight girls are too fat to be models! When our dream came
ix