Plus-size models, in particular, face the additional challenge of appearing confident while possessing a non-normative body in fashion. Randa, a size ten/twelve commercial print model, experienced this when working alongside a straight-size model at a photo shoot:
Something was different. They [the production staff] treated me different. The photographer called her [the straight-sized model] “Love” but I was “you in the blue dress.” I think it was because of my size . . . At the fitting, there wasn’t much to choose from. She [the straight-size model] had a whole rack [of clothes]. They didn’t seem prepared for someone my size. They didn’t seem to care. They put more effort into her look than my look.
Posing side-by-side with a straight-size model made Randa more self-conscious about her body. She felt out of place and re-stigmatized because of her fat. While plus-size models try to expand the definition of beauty in fashion, experiences like Randa’s expose how deeply the thin ideal is entrenched within fashion.
A Tell-Tale Photograph
While a model may camouflage her insecurity at an in-person casting, photographs ultimately reveal a model’s level of comfort with her body. To illustrate, an agent showed me the proofs from a recent photo shoot of a prospective model:
Some people, they’re just beautiful but don’t photograph well. Here’s the perfect example. This girl is so beautiful. She is plus-size. Adorable, gorgeous, but I really don’t like the pictures. She was nervous. She did not do a good job.
The agent gave a vague critique of the photographs, but this was because elements of affective labor can be indescribable. As he discerned from the photographs, this model did not engage in effective affective labor because he did not see any sparkle in her eyes. Her eyes were, as he described, “dead.” In the end, the agent did not waste time determining the source of this model’s failure to produce “good” pictures and refused to work with her.
Modeling agents receive thousands of submissions a year from hopeful models seeking their representation, and they scour through each and every snapshot received in the mail or online through the agency website. Some agencies even hold regular open calls. In order to get through all of these prospective models, modeling agents make instantaneous decisions based on a glance at a photograph. That is why it is important for the model to be able to emote well in pictures. A single image reveals her skills at affective labor.
At an agency open call, I had my first glimpse at what it felt to be “just a body.” The agent evaluated my potential to model based only on a snapshot, without a word exchanged. I had wanted to talk with her and demonstrate my outgoing personality which, I presumed, would translate well into pictures, but that was an unnecessary part of the audition process. Agents primarily judge models on the basis of a picture.
Shocked by the impersonal nature of that open call, I looked forward to a scheduled meeting with the director at another agency. Surely, I would be able to demonstrate my interpersonal skills during a face-to-face meeting. Needless to say, this peculiar contradiction confronted me again. As I entered the agent’s office, he immediately offered this judgment, “You’re cute and have a good personality.” Without words exchanged beyond a simple salutation, the agent evaluated my personality, again, simply based on my physical appearance in a photograph.
Sociologist Elizabeth Wissinger shares a similar account of a young model accompanied by her mother seeking representation at a New York modeling agency:
An agent came out to meet them, and, using a Polaroid camera, shot a picture of the girl, right there, in the lobby. In a moment, it was done, and, after a very brief exchange with the agent, mother and daughter headed for the elevator and their next appointment, or perhaps this girl’s big break . . . The fact that it took the agent only a few seconds with a Polaroid camera to evaluate this model, speaks volumes about the criteria for obtaining work in the industry, and what the agencies look for in terms of standards of appearance and behavior. There was no need to actually speak to the girl.4
If an agent does not see a “spark” of affective labor in that photograph, the prospective model will be passed over for the next snapshot in the towering pile or the next anxious body waiting in the lobby. While it is possible to cultivate this energy over time with increased levels of confidence, if a model does not have what could be described as “star quality,” she will not get her proverbial foot in the door.
Juggling Emotional Labor
Models require a great deal of emotional labor to charm clients while being scrutinized by them, as well as to juggle an unpredictable schedule of castings, go-sees, and fittings. During the course of my fieldwork, the impersonal nature of castings struck me. At a casting for a runway show, I walked into the room to find a three-person panel. Without the customary exchange of greeting, one on the panel ordered, “Straight walk twice, no turns. Go!” On cue, the music started and I began my walk down an imaginary runway. The cold reception from the panel left me a bit stunned and befuddled, so, consequently, I forgot to monitor my facial expression while my hips were swinging to the rhythm of the music. I failed to maintain my composure given an unexpected interaction with casting. I let my emotions get the better of me. I did not get the job.
At another casting, I met Wendy, a size eighteen model who had been working in runway and showroom for a women’s plus-size clothing store. She recounted to me her earlier run-in at a casting that same morning:
I got there fifteen minutes early, so I stuck my head in the door and asked if I could go in. One of the casting directors barked back at me, “We will start at noon.” But I had asked the director of the show if I could come by earlier because I had this casting and he said yes. I waited until noon and stuck my head in again, and they said they were not ready. As I was sitting there I could hear the casting director complaining, “Don’t these models know that noon means noon.” I was so mad that I left without auditioning. I pride myself on being punctual.
Unfortunately, Wendy was not able to rein in her feelings for the casting, but the comments she overheard from the casting director revealed a lopsided opportunity structure. Models aim to please clients and casting directors, i.e., to be voiceless, smiling bodies.
Besides the occasional chilling experience at castings, plus-size models also negotiate any unexpected demands that emerge. When I met Dana, a size sixteen model, she struggled with a schedule filled with multiple rehearsals for an upcoming runway show, difficult directors, and hidden costs for walking the runway. Exasperated, Dana explained, “I have to sell forty-dollar tickets to a [runway] show that I am not being paid for, and he [the director] won’t return my damn calls.” Plus-size models inhabit a low-status niche in fashion. Consequently, fashion directors often require them to sell tickets for runway shows that they participate in. Dana arrived to a casting heavily burdened by these responsibilities (as well as those of a mother to a rambunctious toddler) but, for the sake of her career, she let her frustration pass before entering the audition room. “I’m a professional. I do my job,” Dana told me before heading into the casting room. Always engaged in emotional labor, models must leave negative attitudes and low energy at the door in order to perform and impress clients and casting directors.
Another significant component of emotional labor is confidence. This did not mean that these women have perfect body images. In an interview with PLUS Model Magazine, Angellika, who had worked in the industry for more than a decade and was the first plus-size model inducted into the Modeling Hall of Fame, revealed, “Do I have things I don’t like on my body? Of course [stomach] but I enhance everything else about myself and roll with the punches.”5 Likewise, Joelle vented about a surmounting social pressure she faced to be a modern-day body ambassador brimming with self-confidence:
People always expect us to be on and confident, but everyone has some sort of insecurity. I still get nervous today when I’m going to a casting. Who will be there? What will they ask me to do? What will I have to wear? I’m like any woman,
and nothing brings out a girl’s insecurity like a bathing suit. I won’t wear it in public, but, on a closed set for a job, I’ll do it. I’ll be brave.
These models are told to “work it” by embracing their bodies and embodying confidence; however, they work in a professional environment that aims for physical perfection and criticizes those bodies that fail to measure up.
Models engage in the most taxing form of emotional labor when they try to maintain composure while receiving criticism, some of which can be unwarranted and destructive. Early in her career, Janice, a size sixteen/eighteen commercial print and fit model, signed with an agent at an agency specializing in plus-size models:
She [the agent] told me to change my hair, weight. She even suggested I get a chin implant! . . . She’d call me at all hours, in the middle of the night . . . After a casting, she’d call me to tell me what the client said, like, “She’s not pretty enough.” Like that helps!
Since a model depends on her agent to find her work and negotiate with clients on her behalf, she often finds herself in a predicament to appease her agent’s demands. Under an exclusive contract with this agent, Janice suffered the verbal abuse. Janice acknowledged that her body was not the one typically celebrated in American culture, but to have her agent, whom she believed would be her mentor in the field, was discouraging. “She [the agent] played me,” Janice vented. Since then, she has been wary of exclusive contracts with agencies.
A model endures the careful management of her feelings and strain to her self-esteem in order to work from day to day, client to client. Most often, though, these models never find out why they were not cast for a particular job. When one model asked her booker the outcome of a casting, she was told, in vague terms that the client “went in another direction.” Stephanie explained, “I’m constantly told, ‘You’re too big or small.’ It ain’t easy to hear. That’s the business. I chose to do this so I have to live with it.” Despite this uncertainty, they persist from one casting to the next in hopes of booking work. Their persistence, despite this unknown, is a key component of their emotional labor.
Self-Surveillance with a Tape Measure
Models spend a majority of their time engaged in physical labor to keep their bodies camera-ready. A model prepares her body for the performance of modeling. As post-structuralist feminist philosopher Judith Butler argues, gender is a performative accomplishment, i.e., an identity constructed through daily actions and use of the body that culminates in an impression of one’s gender.6 In “doing gender,” individuals act at the risk of assessment, where others will hold them accountable for their behavior.7 Here, the plus-size model, as a gendered woman, is under considerable cultural pressure to “do looks.” Additionally, she is directed by her agency to give a specific gendered performance that conveys the impression that she is, indeed, a model. Her job is to use her body to strike the right pose and sell a garment for a client. In order to effectively do so, a model regulates and disciplines her body. By way of toning and shaping her body through diet and exercise or artificial enhancements, the model prepares her body for the needs of clients. These performative acts of a model may appear to be the result of personal choice, but they work within the confines of an existing cultural structure that awards compliance to a constructed image of plus-size beauty.
According to French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault, power relations define the body in economic terms as both a productive body and a subjected body. Here in this Foucauldian view, the bodies of fashion models are subject to an agent’s gaze. The fashion industry commodifies a model’s body, where each curve determines her economic potential. Consequently, a model tracks her measurements and engages in a number of bodily practices to remain competitive in the field.
A Foucauldian analysis of the body involves mapping the power relations that operate within institutions and ripple down to the individual, affecting daily practices. In this case, the specialization of the modeling industry allows agents to categorize models, subjecting the body to classification. Plus-size models respond to this subjectification by the industry by internalizing the gaze and engaging in new forms of self-discipline. Here, the tape measure is an institutionalized tool of regulation as it measures and evaluates a model’s body. No longer confined to the sole possession of an agent or a fashion designer, models also use a tape measure to track their bodies. Working within this web of power relations, models become “docile” bodies to fit the desired image of a plus-size model.
Appearance plays a key role in gendered subjectivity, where “doing looks” is integral to the production of gendered social identity. Susan Bordo, in Foucauldian fashion with a feminist twist, acknowledges the productive role women have in bodily pursuits but ultimately concedes that they become “docile” bodies disciplined to survey and improve their bodies, duped into adhering to idealized constructions of feminine embodiment discursively mediated by the culture through a cosmetic panopticon. An internalized sense of disciplinary power, exercised by self-surveillance and self-policing, maintains a model’s gendered subjectivity, resulting in her pursuit of an aesthetic ideal established by fashion. These models internalize a normalizing gaze and, by use of individualized disciplinary practices, reproduce the “subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies.”8 Here, these models actively work on their bodies to achieve a look mandated by the cosmetic panopticon. They judge their bodies through fashion’s eyes and according to fashion’s criteria. When they fail, they experience a sense of shame and insecurity, similar to that of Caroline.
While a group of plus-size models and I waited in the hallway for an open call with an agency, one freelance, size sixteen model, Caroline, anxiously asked the departing models if they had been measured by the agent during the interview. Once Caroline heard that the agent measured the other models “in over a dozen places no one would expect,” she turned to me in noticeable panic, explaining that her measurements had changed from the ones listed on her composite card—a model’s business card—since she had gained weight over the holidays.
Caroline knew it was common practice for agents to measure models. The act of being measured, itself, did not trouble her. Rather, Caroline feared that the agent would chastise her for her failure to maintain her bodily measurements. Caroline believed that the agent would then perceive her as unprofessional and, therefore, refuse to work with her. Caroline depended on securing this agent’s representation to provide her with work opportunities. As a freelance model, she exhausted her existing contacts and needed new clients. This level of fear-laden bodily consciousness that Caroline exhibited is not only typical but also necessary for a plus-size model, who is subject to fashion’s gaze. Models, like Caroline, experience an overt, constant pressure to maintain their figures, since there is always someone, whether an agent or client, present with a tape measure.
Little did I know that my decision to model had an effect on aspects of my life thought to be unfazed by fashion’s trends and preoccupation with appearance. For example, I reflected more on what I wore to the classroom to teach a class of college undergraduates. I utilized some of the tricks I learned from makeup artists and hair stylists and gained a newfound appreciation for Velcro rollers. I stuck to my six-day-a-week exercise routine of Pilates and cardio on the treadmill and, with due hypervigilance, counted calories and monitored portion sizes using smaller plates and mini snack bowls. Failure to do so would induce a pang of guilt and lead to stress, which would lead to breakouts, so I leaned on meditative prayer and flexibility training with its relaxing stretches as my stabilizing crutch after the time spent dwelling on my body and appearance. I had successfully internalized the self-surveillance and discipline required of models by a fashion institution. I, too, succumbed to the pressure of tracking my body’s measurements daily with a measuring tape, the prominent tool of institutionalized corporal discipline and regulation.
Artful Manipulations
Contrary to cultural perceptions of fat women,
plus-size models are disciplined and engage in constant monitoring and management of their bodily capital. Sociologist Loïc Wacquant utilizes the case of the boxer to explain this concept of bodily capital:
The successful pursuit of a career [in boxing] . . . presupposes a rigorous management of the body, a meticulous maintenance of each one of its parts, an attention of every moment, in and out of the ring, to its proper functioning and protection. . . . The pugilist’s body is at once the tool of his work—an offensive weapon and defensive shield—and the target of his opponent.9
Here, the boxer’s body is a form of commodified physical capital, requiring monitoring and training in order to win a match.
In this way, bodily capital becomes essential to the boxer’s habitus, a bodily state of being that is both a medium and outcome of social practice. Both Wacquant’s boxers and the plus-size models in this study convert their bodily capital, i.e., the shape and active capacity of a body, into economic capital. For the plus-size model, her body is her career. The condition of her body—the size, shape, and muscle tone—determines her chances for employment.
Training the body increases its utility and capital. In their ethnographic study of aging ballet dancers, Steven P. Wainwright and Bryan S. Turner refine Bourdieu’s concept of bodily capital. To better describe the athletic nature of the professional dancer, Wainwright and Turner divide the concept of “athletic physical capital” into four criteria: speed, strength, stamina, and suppleness. All four aspects are present in athletes with differing levels of concentrated development. While a dancer may focus on increasing suppleness, a boxer will train to increase strength and speed.
Fashioning Fat: Inside Plus-Size Modeling Page 9
