Here is an excerpt from my book, How not to be a supermodel. It’s taken from a chapter about model castings and the physical/sports skills I lied about having to try to get a job. Could I play the drums, for example? Sure:
Was I a professional level ice skater? Yeah:
They were necessary little white lies, by the way, because I possessed virtually no physical abilities (I couldn’t jet ski or surf or ride a horse or even swim underwater) and if I hadn’t gone the “fake it ’til you make it” route, I would have ruled out half my job prospects.
In this chapter I end up in some compromising, yet oddly zen-like, positions and completely lose any shred of dignity I thought I had.
And so, without further ado: an (abbreviated) excerpt from How not to be a supermodel.
When it came to modeling castings, I loved trying out just about anything for a good paycheck. There were a lot of skills that were in high demand, usually ones I didn’t have. Apparently, that didn’t matter.
“Honey,” my Texan agent would say, “can you ski? It’s for Breitling watches and you have to be able to slalom to get down the slopes.”
“I’ve never skied,” I said, “no.”
‘Never?’
‘No.’
“Honey, anyone can ski. Just tell them you used to ski when you were little and you’ll be fine.”
—Well, but when I get the job, I’ll probably have to ski?
“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
EITHER,
“Hey honey,” my other agent would say, “can you ride a scooter?… Okay, but what if push comes to shove?”
The worst casting call for “sports suitors” I ever did was one for a newly launched women’s sportswear brand and its range of yoga wear. And the fault, this time, was entirely my own.
“Honey, do you do yoga?” Texana asked me when I called to confirm our appointments for the next day.
-No, but my mom teaches it.
There was a pause.
-Okay, babe, but… do you? you Doing yoga? It’s just that for this casting, you’ll have to do a series of postures, so you need to know the lingo.
“Yeah, I can do the positions,” I said, “stretching and crossing my legs. I can probably still do a handstand.”
“It’s okay,” Texana said. “I’m just worried that the beer commercial situation will repeat itself.”
‘Where did I do the Karate Kid moves?’
“Oh my god, babe, what the hell. They said it was like watching someone take acid and then try to fight themselves in a hall of mirrors.”
“Ah,” I said, “I’ll be sure to practice some yoga positions.”
—Poses, my love —said Texana—. They’re called poses.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I’m doing warm-up exercises as we speak. I’m going to take on the warrior dog and the downward spiral.”
The yoga casting took place in a dance studio, beautifully lit by sunlight streaming in through two windows that extended to the wooden floor from a mirrored wall. The clients, three friendly women in their thirties or forties, sat behind a table on which were stacked folders of models. They looked very serene, their hair in ballerina buns or loose over their shoulders, all dressed in the kind of soft fabrics and soft colors that make your own clothes look like they were stolen from an 18th-century vampire.
“Nice to meet you, Ruth,” said the first customer. “We were desperate to book you for a campaign, so it’s great that this yoga range was a good fit. You have exactly the style we want.”
“We’ll start with the warrior pose,” said client number two, as she turned on some spa music.
Warrior pose? What the hell was this! Couldn’t they just see me in the tights and crop top and be done with it? Surely on the day of the shoot someone could fix my legs and arms.
“It’s important to us,” said client number three, “that whoever we hire genuinely practices yoga.”
Oh.
“We want the campaign to be authentic and for the images to catch the attention of our customers. We are not just a brand that uses models who look good in our clothes, we are a brand that uses models who will wear our clothes in real life. Real sportspeople, athletes, mountain climbers and hopefully you, like our seasoned yogi.”
Wait. What?
‘Yogi?’
“Let’s get started and see how the samples look,” said the second customer. “I can’t wait to try on the taupe baggy pants.”
For the warrior, I pretended to hold a spear in one hand and put the other on my hip. To be fair, I wasn’t a million miles from the correct stance – I put my legs in a strong, wide-spread stance that looked relatively convincing, actually. The leaning forward stance was pretty self-explanatory, and miraculously, I actually knew the bridge. It was when the other stances came up, the more abstract names, that shit really hit the proverbial fanatic. Who would have thought that the “mountain stance” would be “standing up straight”? What mountain is tall and thin and not big and round, like a rock? Which would obviously make more sense, completely explaining why a person would think they should curl up into a big ball, hugging their knees and tucking their head between their legs…
“Okay,” the second client said, a slight quiver of confusion in her voice, “let’s move on to downward dog.”
I mean, how would a dog orient itself downwards? Isn’t it already mostly downwards oriented, due to the fact that it walks on four legs?
“That’s more like cow pose,” said client one, “but with all four legs straight. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it like that, but it’s okay. Now let’s move on to child’s pose.”
Well. Even under such intense pressure, my mind was firing off ideas left and right, bless it. I had sensed extreme danger to my career and had risen to the occasion, providing solutions to each prompt with only a second or two of hesitation. It was like I was in some bizarre version of Charades. Brainin which the host would shout out a random word and I had to figure out which action could possibly (with a probability of one in a thousand) be the correct one.
Never before had my mind and body had to work so hard as one. And now, after the cow pose, downward dog, mountain pose, and boat pose (which I was quite satisfied with, since I had managed to use my arms as oars), and One leg as a mast) I had one last challenge. The child’s pose.
“Do you need help?” client number three asked me, as I lay still on the mat, eyes closed, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. Buying time.
“No,” I said, my eyes still closed and my hands over my ears, because that was fine. “I’m fine, thanks. I’m just doing some breathing exercises before I do the next position.”
What poses were the kids doing? There was the fetal sleeping position, which didn’t seem stretchy enough to be a yoga pose and was therefore my least favorite choice, and then I’d thought about jumping rope. But you couldn’t hold a jumping pose, or jump in slow motion, unless you wanted to look like a complete nutcase, so that wasn’t likely either. The kids liked climbing trees, but I’d done the tree pose with the branches outstretched and my toes moving toward the ground like roots (nice touch!) and so what were the chances of them asking me to repeat what I said? Nope, it would have to be my fourth choice and I was pretty sure of that because, so far, they hadn’t asked me for any of my tried and true yoga moves. And I had no interest in doing a handstand in front of them, so I adopted the most childish pose of all, the one that all children under ten must adopt for hours during the school week, in a room that stank of boiled vegetables: sitting cross-legged.
“Hey,” said customer one.
“Uhm,” said number two.
“I’m not sure this is exactly what we’re looking for,” said the third customer, as I awkwardly rose to a standing position, or “normal pose.”
“Okay,” I said, “I know my type of yoga isn’t for everyone.”
How not to be a supermodel is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook here. If you’re not in the UK, please note that Waterstones ships worldwide. At the time of writing, there are a limited number of signed first editions available from Toppings here.
