I used to be a teen model. Here's my story how the fashion industry destroyed my soul and how I got it back.
I was really good-looking when I was young. You can call me vain, self-absorbed, whatever you want. It doesn’t matter, it’s true. I was fairly self-absorbed. I had to be. My body and face became my personal ATM.
I was ushered into the enviable Elite modeling high fashion world at age 15. It happened really fast. My classmates in Missouri were jealous of my meteoric rise. One day I was living with my parents, the next I was on a plane to Tokyo, having just signed a contract with Elite Model Management for $20,000. The 3-month contract stated I would make $20k even if I didn’t land any modeling gigs while in Tokyo. Only a fool would have turned down that contract.
While in Japan, I cashed out my genetic lottery ticket and went as far as I could before totally crashing and burning from self-hatred and disgust.
Was I ready to have an adult modeling career with real money as a teenager? No. Did I learn any life lessons or become a better person? Sort of. But it took losing everything to make me into a human again.
You may be asking these questions about now:
Why am I not rich now? Why did I sink into abject poverty for years and years? Why didn’t I marry some wealthy man? Why am I a single mother?
Modeling is not a career. It’s a way to cash out your genetic lottery ticket, that’s all. I got lucky because I happened to live in a society and during a time when physical attractiveness was valued more than anything else.
This is what happened:
I was an introvert and still am. I suffered from delicate flower syndrome. This meant I internalized and analyzed the external world to an obscene degree. This also meant I internalized external signals and messages more than people who are outwardly focused. I ingested messages, twisted them around in my mind and sometimes caved inwards when an environment, like the modeling industry, was too toxic.
I became anorexic and bulimic in response to the pressures of the modeling world. Most female bodies do not stay absurdly thin after their teen years. My 15 year-old body was quite different from my 19 year-old one. Evolution has favored a filled-out female figure for obvious child-bearing survival reasons. The modeling industry promotes a version of females who have lost the ability to bear children. I knew anorexic models whose periods had stopped because of their horrifically low body weight. And I once met an anorexic who had grown a light covering of hair on her chest. This was her body’s defense to create heat because it had lost all it’s warmth-giving fat.
After a while, I stopped respecting myself for living in a fake world of empty money. I stopped caring about making any more of it. It had lost it’s value. I was in a place of money, living a life that was hollow and devoid of any meaning or purpose. I started hating my life. I understood that hoarding money wasn’t the answer to happiness. I also knew that money alone would never be able to make me happy. I started cutting myself.
I began craving invisibility, purpose and meaning. One day, while I was staring out of a train window in Japan, I saw a peasant tending a rice field. I longed to be that peasant because I assumed the peasant felt connected to something greater than herself: nature. I could have been wrong, but I knew I had to get out of the modeling industry before it warped me even more. The peasant symbolized purpose and humility.
At age 18, after drunk driving myself to Canada from Chicago, I rejected the modeling world for good. After three months of aimlessly wandering around Canada and the East Coast, I decided to return to Missouri and check myself into a mental ward. My bulimia gradually went away on its own. I decided to go to college after I was released from the Eating Disorder Unit.
In college, I became ashamed of my modeling experiences and would only discuss them with my closest friends.
I’m still ashamed, even to this day. I wish I could be proud of my physical appearance, but there is nothing to be proud of. The only ones who deserve praise are my parents. They are the ones who created my physical self. I had nothing to do with it. And now that I’m sagging, a bit puffy and middle-aged, I’m 2000% happier. My insides match my outsides much better now.
Thanks for sharing your story, I am glad you made peace with your past and feel healthy now.
what was Japan like btw? I have always been intrigued by their culture
Japan was a mixed bag. It was safe, futuristic and a terrible place for women. As a foreigner I enjoyed an elevated status and I also loved that drinking to excess was a normal part of life. The Japanese people are self-effacing and gracious. I learned my manners in Japan but I also learned to appreciate the openness and ability to be creative in the USA. People were stifled and stress was a huge issue. It's best to just go to the place you're interested in. You will learn the truth that way.
We're all hot on the inside.
Ha ha! Most people are not hot on the inside. That's why the world is fucked. And the ones who are truly hot on the inside don't know it.
I don't know about hot but I'm definitely warm on the inside. :P
The concept of modeling being a way to cash out your genetics and body like it was an ATM is new to me but yeah, that really makes sense. I can see how that would really mess with your head too.
It's an ugly world.
that's a very touching story. Thank you for sharing it
You're welcome.
You used "I" 55 times.
that's a little depressing, but not surprising. The word 'self-absorbed' was applied in the first paragraph, though.
Did you really count my use of "I"? Why?
:)
You could stop reading and change topic... But I think deep inside you, you enjoyed it! You will realize it when you are alone without your roommate...
...believe me... when that happens you will miss all the "current translated" negativity...
Their Imperfection is what we really miss from people they are gone...
Your situation sounds unfortunate. Perhaps there is a way to remedy it? I'm not sure how to interpret your last "Get real" comment. What is your intent behind it?
I thought that the thumbnail was a picture of Miley Cyrus and that this was going to be a joke. Turns out it's the opposite. Glad it ends well though.
Unfortunately I had to employ click bait-style graphics and text in order to draw the necessary attention from humans. I've been testing various methods on Medium and this has been my popular post to date. I have way better articles than this, but since we are all still interested in status-seeking goals, I unfortunately have had to resort such tactics. I like the idea, however of creating superficial-looking posts that contain substance. This is what Jenna Marbles did on YouTube. It's unfortunate but seems to work. Until humans evolve a bit, it appears that click bait is here to stay. but that photo is actually me.
Is that your picture from now or from 15?
15
May you find it. https://steemit.com/humanity-spirituality/@easteagle13/how-to-be-happy
I have also found that through the wisdom of growing older, I am more happy being my "authentic self" than the one that needs to be pretty. I am happy you have found happiness along the way :)
Thanks for sharing. Most folks drunk drive their way out of Canada, haha
yeah
I hear that! ha ha
Thanks for sharing this, so touching, you have no need to be ashamed, blow all guilt out the window. Earth School... Oh Earth School and it's classes. You writing is beautiful and inspiring. I use to be in Modeling too when I was a little girl, my mom was horrified when she caught me in the bathroom with some 11 and 12 year old girls, they were snorting cocaine. I didn't do any, and she heard me say no, but my mother was livid, more at the fact that the mother of the girl with cocaine didn't care and admitted that it won't her. She just wanted her daughter to be a star. (My mom is not slim but has a beautiful soul.) Reading your story makes me appreciate my mother even more. I can see your beauty. My mom was a single mother too. Happy you found your joy and gladness.
What a touching personal story that of your, milady.
I was reading the answer that you gave to my comment in another text of yours, "money as a form of energy", in Medium.com, when i decided to find you in Steemit, but i wasn´t expecting such a hard blow.
I find your experience very unique, for being able to enter in contact with such a harsh reality, that is portrayed like a "dream" by the mass media, and the mass fools that support it.
The old wise ones says that we have to learn, either by love, or trough pain, but the lesson will force itself upon us.
By reading your words i´m forced to make the question: in an imaginary universe, of magical quantic possiibilities, how would your life be, if you learned the same lessons that this hard experience teached you trough pleasure, instead of pain?
Looking to my own past, i ask to myself "How can i learn trough pleasure, the same lessons that i learned trough pain?"
But it´s not the past that is really imporant, the fundamental question, the question that will define our destinies is "How can i learn all the lessons that life will teach me, in the future, with pleasure, instead of pain?"
Can you imagine a life of creativity, where time is spent in searching new ways of having even more hapyness and prosperity, like an artist doing his, or her, Art, instead of fight to survive, to overcome chalanges in the struggle sense, not in the artistic/creative sense?
" I was looking for an answer.
It's the question that drives us, Neo."