Writing My Own Rule Book
I had the odds stacked against me on this one. I am short (by model standards), I was below the written height requirement, I self submitted, and my print portfolio is relatively small. Yet I booked another NYC modeling gig! How?! Well the creative director told me she loved a video I made on instagram! She said "we love your energy, it's so natural and fun, and we thought, we HAVE to have this girl on set! We replayed your video like 20 times." So make what you want to make and post what you want to post. The right person will see it.
(side note, this creative director also worked with my favorite music artist of all time SOFI TUKKER and we gushed at how awesome they are in our emails.)
The gig was for a unique jewelry brand that takes inspiration from natural and historical designs. Tell me I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure women of average height, and dare I say, below average height, all wear jewelry.
Long story short, I’ve been repeatedly told by many a modeling agency I am simply too short to model. Yet I persist. I apply directly to the photographers, directors, casting, and I get booked. If you’re apart of the industry, you know that the rules are made up. The rules are ever-changing. The rules can work against you or for you. Not too long ago, all models had to fit within a 0-2 size range (arbitrary numbers of which the meaning also changes decade to decade) and be within a certain (cough cough) european demographic… White. Okay they mostly cast white people. Ahg. Slowly, selectively, they allowed models of varying ethnicities. At last, select, non-designer, companies such as American Eagle began campaigns that included women beyond the 0-2. Within the last five years, they’ve added women of varying physical abilities. This big and rapid shift towards wider representation was largely driven by the growing importance of social media marketing. When the public has a loud, constantly commenting voice, the marketing offices take notice. It should not have taken that long to change. There is so much more work to be done particularly with the big fashion houses. In 2012, Melissa McCarthy, struggled to find a designer that would make her an Oscar dress. The amount of limited thinking and snobbery that has to go into refusing an Oscar nominated actress your work and thus refusing vast publicity simply because she is a larger size, is beyond me.
For more on the inner-workings of fashion, watch Justine Leconte. She is a Parisian designer who speaks openly on the issues of sustainability, sizing, and press in the fashion industry.