Misfit

by Charli Howard

  While I have a tendency to be overdramatic with these kinds of things, going on the pill was HELL for my skin.

  Everyone is different, but within a month of taking it, my face was covered in huge red cysts. I’d had oily skin as a teenager, yes, but nothing like this sh*t heap. It was like a skin monster had taken over my entire body and turned me into a human version of a pepperoni pizza.

  While it’s important to stay safe, contraception and me don’t mix. But I was nineteen, in my first ‘proper’ relationship, and going on the pill was just what you did, wasn’t it? Staying safe and baby-free is never a boy’s problem … right? Right?!

  Well, in the end, this severe reaction I was having became everyone’s problem. My mood swings were more up and down than my cheating ex’s boxers, yet my GP (who was terrible, by the way) told me to keep going with it. ‘This is just a normal side effect,’ he insisted, though my gut said otherwise.

  So I continued to gain weight and deal with the painful skin. I remember accidentally brushing my face with a hairbrush once and crying out in pain. It was excruciating. And now not only was I broke and scared about my future, but also more insecure than I’d ever been about my looks.

  A year before I met him, Scott had been working on a solo record. This, he said, was a masterpiece – better than any of his old band’s stuff. This album would be legendary. But producing this record had also left him broke. He had no money to call his own. As a thirty-year-old, he was still living at home with his very traditional parents, working on new songs on a computer in a spare room at the top of the house.

  As I continued to struggle at uni, something magical happened. Scott was offered another recording contract with one of the world’s biggest labels for £50,000. Can you imagine?! I couldn’t – money like that was in my dreams. I was still living off my university loan, lending Scott money whenever he needed it and paying for meals out just so it felt like we were having a normal dating experience. But this was only the start of an amazing future together, I was sure of it! Imagine that – little old me, with a famous musician boyfriend.

  By this stage, we’d been dating a good two years. I paid for it all – meals, days out, petrol for his car. I had a part-time receptionist job at a hairdresser’s on Saturday mornings, but got fired from that after accidentally playing some very expletive-laden Kanye West songs and scaring an old lady having a perm (bit of an overreaction, if I do say so myself). I’d then got a part-time job in a pub, but Scott got me fired after threatening my boss, accusing him of coming on to me. I was bored of staying in south-east London, when my university friends were sunning around in the south of France. I was a sugar mama, but a twenty-one-year-old one looking after a now-thirty-one-year-old.

  Eventually, I couldn’t afford to take us out any more. I was SKINT. I began to feel envious of girls being spoiled by their boyfriends, who got flowers or treats on the odd occasion. But when I’d get annoyed at Scott for not pulling his weight or not getting a part-time job, he’d tell me we didn’t need money: that our love conquered all. He had a great way of romanticizing situations, or making me feel bad for wanting what normal girls had. Besides, when he was rich and famous, he’d spoil me for eternity.

  As time went on, Scott became increasingly impossible to live with.

  It started off with cooking. He had to be in control of each and every mealtime, asking me to leave him alone in the kitchen. At first, I thought this was Scott’s way of making up for his lack of money – cooking me dinners as a way of showing he cared. And don’t get me wrong: he was a very good chef. But every meal would take up to an hour or so to make, sometimes even longer. Then I’d wash the dishes in two minutes and put them away. But Scott would take them out of the cupboard and inspect them rigorously. My efforts were never good enough, and he’d always redo them.

  The record label’s promises of paying Scott his money in one month turned into two, then three, then six months, and before you knew it, they hadn’t paid him it in a year. Understandably, because the money from the advance wasn’t coming through, this stressed him out even more. And so he’d become more and more agitated. The slightest thing caused an argument.

  When he did eventually get that advance money, guess what? He blew it in around six months. This, apparently, was all my fault. He’d allegedly lost fifty grand by taking me out for a meal once or twice a week, even though he always insisted he pay for it all, and also despite the fact the first two years of our relationship were entirely paid for by me. He blamed me for blowing the money on the expensive designer handbag he’d bought me for Christmas, even though he’d surprised me with it.

  Now, I’m sure you’re reading this and going, ‘Here you go! Another bad boyfriend! Why didn’t you just dump him?!’ But I didn’t view him that way. Compared to the awful men I’d dated before, Scott seemed like an angel.

  If it hadn’t been noticeable that womenswear fashion design was not my forte, the fact that I failed my course said it all. Well, I failed when I first handed in my final coursework; I had the summer to correct it until I passed, and even then I only passed by the skin of my teeth.

  Going to the London College of Fashion had provided a great distraction from agonizing over what to do in the real world. As the end of my course approached, I knew I had to get a job … but doing what? My degree was so specific that I was finding it hard to get hired anywhere.

  So now I was twenty-one, had graduated from uni a good three months prior, without any career prospects and a degree that I didn’t know what to do with. Great! I applied to restaurants, to bars – even to bloody McDonald’s – to no avail. I think it’s safe to say you’ve hit a low point when an employer thinks you’re not capable of serving a few chicken nuggets and milkshakes.

  There was no other option than to go on the dole and go to the Job Centre every week. What a total failure I’d become. I’d wanted to prove all my doubters wrong, and here I was, signing on in bloody Peckham. I knew I wanted to do well in life, becoming an Independent Woman à la Destiny’s Child, and yet this looked like it would never, ever happen.

  But life is full of ups and downs. There’s a theory that for every bad thing that happens to you in life, something equally as great will happen. And after months of being depressed AF, this is what happened to me.

  I remember the evening clearly. I had just been to Sainsbury’s and didn’t have a scrap of make-up on. I’d given up caring about my appearance by this point, because it seemed as though my acne was never going to improve. It was an autumn night and already dark by this point, pouring with rain. To add to my luck, I’d forgotten an umbrella and was sitting on my own underneath a flickering light at a bus stop in south-east London.

  Five minutes passed, then ten. No buses had come. I began worrying about how much I’d spent food shopping. Could I afford next week’s food shop? And then, all of a sudden, I began to cry. God, I was capable of so much more than this! As my school friends were progressing, here I was, crying at a bus stop because there was no escape from my situation.

  Then, as though it was a scene in a film, my phone began to ring. It was the male model I’d bumped into at uni a few months previously. He’d since quit to become a scout, bringing potential models to agencies where he’d make a fee for finding them if they were signed.

  Argh, not now, I thought to myself, but he wouldn’t stop ringing. I wiped my tears and quickly put the phone to my ear inside my hoodie so as not to get rain on it.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, which meant I probably would mind, ‘but I’ve sent your Facebook photos off to some agencies. And guess what – they want to meet you!’

  ‘My Facebook photos?! Which agencies?’ I replied.

  He reeled them off. Three huge ones in London wanted to meet me, including the one that had turned me down when I’d starved myself for months.

  ‘But I’ve been to see all of them before,’ I said. ‘They’ve all turned me down at least twice.’

  ‘Well, now
they’re all interested in signing you,’ he said.

  And then I remembered something else.

  ‘What about my skin?!’

  ‘I already told them about it, and they don’t care. You can work on it. It’s only temporary. Stop worrying.’

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I’d been let down too many times by this stage to fall for false hopes. But something told me this time was different.

  ‘So – when are you free to meet them?’

  10

  My Un-fairy-tale Ending

  My dream came true.

  I was signed on the understanding that I would get my hip span down from thirty-seven inches to thirty-five–thirty-four in a dream scenario. Easy, right? The other agencies I’d visited said they’d only sign me if I got down to the magical thirty-four mark. Thirty-five seemed doable.

  Except it wasn’t ‘doable’ at all. No matter how much I cut out foods or watched my weight, the magic number was still out of reach. Before long, the Brain Deviant began to rear its ugly head again, telling me I wasn’t doing enough, that I was fat and useless. I was doing everything right – eating more healthily, exercising a bit more – and yet nothing on the measuring tape changed. So I began to keep an even closer eye, desperate to be model material at last.

  Getting signed to a modelling agency was supposed to change my life. It was supposed to make up for the years of insecurities and body image issues, and the feeling that I never truly belonged. I was meant to be perfect, yet I didn’t feel perfect in the slightest. Modelling was supposed to make me happy … so why the hell wasn’t I?

  It didn’t make any sense. I truly believed that once the ink on the contract was dry, that was it: my life would be complete and I’d be in control. And, if anything, my life was spiralling downwards.

  The agents were excited about me at first. I was fresh meat, after all. The agency director took me under her wing. She’d discovered some of the most famous supermodels around, so to have her as an agent felt like a dream come true. I was told point-blank that I’d never do runway modelling because of my height, but that wasn’t deemed a problem. The only issue was that because I was so short I allegedly needed to look thinner to ‘balance it out’ and to look like a runway girl.

  They’d send me copies of my latest photos by email, writing, LOOK HOW GREAT YOU LOOK! :), and I’d feel elated for a bit, pleased that a few of my photos had made them happy. But somehow the happiness never lasted, and would dwindle after an hour or so until I felt low again.

  Everything I thought about modelling until that point was wrong, and anyone who says it’s an easy profession doesn’t have a bloody clue. People think you get rich from standing in front of a camera every now and then. But you think you get paid for every shoot? Yeah, right! You’re expected to do a lot of test shoots for your book for free in the hope that they will lead to gigs, and even then getting paid work isn’t guaranteed. So many girls get dropped if they don’t book anything. Before you’ve even made a penny, you’re having to reach into your own pocket and find the funds to pay for your portfolio and cards, travelling to and from shoots, buying clothes to wear to castings or for gym memberships.

  Modelling is impossible to plan your life around, because it becomes your life. You tend to find out your schedule the night before, so it makes it difficult to book appointments or have a spontaneous day out. This includes weekends. You can’t wake up one day and think, I’m going to relax on the diet today, because you never know what casting or job you might have tomorrow – if you get one. You don’t work or go on castings every day. You may have seven days of back-to-back castings or shoots, and then not have a single thing for a month. And you have to be comfortable with that.

  So you can imagine how the uncertainty isn’t particularly helpful to someone with anxiety – someone who is terrified of what could potentially go wrong 24/7. While nobody knows what may or may not happen in the future, with hard work in a normal profession there is a progression: a pay rise, or chance of a promotion. Promotions don’t exist in the modelling world. You either become well known and make more money, or you don’t.

  Modelling is a game based entirely on luck. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time, having the facial features that happen to be fashionable right now, or knowing the right people. There’s no ‘climbing up the career ladder’ – you either make it, or you don’t. Your career essentially lies in your agent’s hands – there’s only so much you can manipulate on your own – and they’ll dictate which casting directors you’ll see, which magazines you’re sent to or which photographers you’ll shoot with. And not everyone becomes the next Kate Moss. There are plenty of girls making hundreds of thousands shooting e-comm work – you know, the girls you see on clothing websites – who will never become household names.

  You’ve got to have a persona on social media, too, or at least do something interesting on the side. You have to have something that makes you stand out from the crowd, like – I don’t know – being an undertaker or something equally bizarre. Like aspiring actresses or singers, you’re a dime a dozen. Becoming a well-known model is nigh on impossible, and even if you do ‘make it’ in the fashion industry, there’s no guarantee any regular person is going to recognize you or ask for your autograph. Does becoming famous indicate your success?

  I know I sound like I’m moaning. So why didn’t I just quit? Because when modelling goes well it’s WONDERFUL. Seriously, it’s everything you imagined it could be and more: glamorous, exciting, dramatic. These bits are what you don’t want to let go of. You meet the most creative and interesting people, who, like me, once dreamt of breaking into the fashion industry. And while you’re not curing diseases, you’re creating images that allow the average person to escape from the mundanities of everyday life. When it’s good, it’s the most fabulous job in the world.

  Once you’ve received a big pay cheque, it’s very hard to let that go and get a ‘normal’ job or career. Most fashion people stay for the money because they won’t earn that amount anywhere else. Brands will think nothing of dropping huge sums of money on productions – I did a job recently that cost in excess of $500,000 – and who would want to turn down the travelling, hotels and big shoots? The clothes, the parties, the catering, the creative teams of people you work with … it’s like stepping into the pages of a fairy tale. And I think this was another reason I didn’t want to give up modelling: my teenage dreams of what I imagined modelling to be were often realized, and I got to live those dreams.

  I wanted to make it work so badly that if I wasn’t obsessively watching what I ate, I was obsessively trying to create luck for myself.

  You see, if I managed to create luck for myself, perhaps I would be become successful. I began looking for lucky opportunities everywhere. For example, I stopped walking under ladders, because this could affect my luck. I’d cross my fingers if I crossed somebody on the stairs. I’d make a wish at 11:11 to become successful. Somebody told me it was unlucky to drink alcohol without looking at someone in the eye first, or if you clinked an alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink together. I’d read my horoscope religiously until I read something positive. I’d salute two magpies for ‘joy’ (like in the poem, ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’), and would go mad if I couldn’t find another magpie if I’d seen just the one. I may not have had much control over how my career would pan out, but I could try to assume some control over how lucky I’d be.

  I never knew what I’d be getting when I went into the agency. It became a game of Mood Roulette, where you’d never know what vibe you’d be confronted with.

  I’d go in one day and the bookers would appear calm and happy – God forbid, friendly, almost – and I’d chuckle to myself, wondering what I’d ever been so nervous about. It’s all in your head! I’d think. But then the next time I visited, I’d snappily be asked why I wasn’t toned enough yet, or why I wasn’t taking the job seriously, when in reality I’d never taken anything more seriously in my
entire life.

  When I went into the agency I’d be met by a group of skinny, glamorous people eyeing me up and down. Sometimes they couldn’t be bothered to greet me at all – physically unable, it seemed, to mutter a courteous ‘hello’. In the end I realized that if they studied me and didn’t say anything, nice or not, I was fine. Phew! But I was constantly waiting for the next bout of catty comments.

  It wasn’t just me; they weren’t particularly nice to each other, either. I’d sit there uncomfortably while the intern was being yelled at, or look down at my lap when she stepped outside crying. I’d listen to them laughing nastily about a girl who’d just walked in, or talking about who they were going to drop. How did I know I wouldn’t be next?

  And so I lived with the idea that one day my agents would come to their senses and drop me … because why wouldn’t they? I couldn’t understand how, despite my millions of flaws, I was still on their books. I was desperate to remain a model, and even though deep down I knew I wasn’t that happy, I pushed that fact to the back of my mind. I was constantly living for the ‘We’re sorry, but …’ discussion … And this wait for what I believed to be inevitable kept me constantly on edge.

  Needless to say, this uncertainty was the perfect recipe for my eating disorders to completely take over my life again.

  I wasn’t the only new model on the board when I joined. The agency was growing rapidly, representing some of fashion’s best new faces, and it was comforting to have a friendly group of girls from around the world to share that with.

  I suggested that a group of us go on a trip to Nando’s as a chance to bond. It was affordable, it was convenient, and who doesn’t like a cheeky Nando’s on a Friday night?

  I’ll tell you who: a bunch of models.

  We were all ooh-ing and aah-ing at what to order from the menu – not because Nando’s is renowned for its variety of food options, but because we were all worried about what a chicken wing would do to our physiques. I pretended to glance at the menu like I was seeing it for the first time, but I’d already googled the calories of a piri-piri chicken pita beforehand, and I’m pretty sure these girls had, too.