I dreamt of becoming a high fashion model, here’s what it’s really like

“The life I’d hoped would be a perfect fit had, at times, felt so tight I couldn’t breathe.”

Curious acquaintances have told me that how I was scouted sounds like a movie scene. I was on Canal Street, sticky from the Northeastern summertime humidity. I could hear someone yelling, but I lived in New York City, so I soldiered on. As any seasoned New Yorker knows, the things yelled out on streets are rarely your business.

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But this time, it was my business. The body attached to the yell finally caught up with me. He asked if I was a model. I shook my head. He asked if I would like to be a model. “Maybe,” I replied. Within weeks, I was in Paris, walking the runway for Clare Waight Keller’s first collection with Givenchy. I was 19 years old and on top of the world. 

From small town to fashion week

After moving from a sleepy, conservative town to the city that never sleeps, I’d spent the last year or so testing the waters. Who was I? Who did I want to be? I wasn’t sure yet, but I was excited to find out. Armed with a lifetime of religious indoctrination and minimal experience of the outside world, I’d tried on lives like costumes. Some I had to squeeze into while others ballooned around me.

But the life of an international model – I would’ve shrunk or grown as much as I needed for that to be mine. So I did, at least for a while. My subconscious motto became ‘Keep sweet to succeed’. If my agency asked me to jump, I’d say, “How high?”. If a makeup artist purposefully pinched my eyelids with an eyelash curler to ‘teach’ me to sit still, I wouldn’t flinch. If a photographer asked me to take my top off, I’d oblige with such nonchalance you’d think it was my own idea, even if my heart was really in my throat.

But five months into my modelling career, I still hadn’t seen a cent. I’d quit my job (and university) to give fashion my undivided attention. My first few jobs had yet to pay me, so I lived off credit cards and my mum’s generosity. When my first New York Fashion Week brought less success than my agents had hoped for, I thought it might be best to sit out London Fashion Week.

A lesser-known industry fact is that while you may be jetting across the globe and staying in cute European flats, you almost always do so on your own dime. London Fashion Week was shorter than the others, featuring only two designers my agents hoped to pitch me to. The odds weren’t in my favour, and it seemed silly to spend more while earning nothing.

I went into my agency to break the news that I didn’t want to go to London. The agent I told wasn’t happy. He brought me into an office, closed the door and screamed at me. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re not a star! You don’t get to make fucking demands!”

I left in tears. It was the first of many moments that made me feel less than human. Of course, he denied it ever happened and everyone at the agency believed him. They all agreed that maybe I shouldn’t be in the industry at all. They’d be proven wrong within the week. I was flown to Europe by a designer, began a life-changing relationship with a major fashion house and finally made money. But the sour taste in my mouth remained.

Over the next few years, I became well-acquainted with every flaw on my body as colleagues flippantly noted my asymmetrical face, the size of my feet, the cellulite on my thighs or the fact that I was pretty, but in a strange and unconventional and unsexy way. 

I’d stand up for myself only to immediately regret it. I watched my friends survive on green juice and cigarettes for weeks on end after having their inner thighs examined by an agent or casting director. We often weren’t treated like people, so we stopped feeling like people.

Breaking up with modelling

It’s hard to say what my last straw was. Maybe the time when I went to a photoshoot in Midtown and the photographer ushered me into the back of a van. I texted my agent to ask if she knew where we were going. She didn’t. Did she know when I’d be returning home? She didn’t. After two hours of driving, I lost cell reception, so I never found out if she knew they weren’t going to let me eat or drink water the whole day.

Or maybe it was the night I came home from an unpaid photoshoot carrying a bag full of my own burnt hair after a hairstylist attempted to turn my fine waves into an afro, only to decide to straighten it later.

Whichever it was, I was done. The life I’d hoped would be a perfect fit had, at times, felt so tight I couldn’t breathe. Other times, I felt so small that I wanted to scream until I felt seen again. When I finally stepped away from the industry, the ghosts of these moments haunted me. I saw criticism and exploitation where there was none. I felt angry. I felt hurt. And worst of all, I felt like no one.

Last year, I moved to Australia for university. I developed a chronic pain condition that sent me to therapy where I finally had space to unpack my relationship with myself and my body. I think I know who I am now, and I feel like that identity is my own. Now, when I look back on my career, I can finally see the good too.

For better or worse, modelling changes people’s lives. As a model, I travelled the world, met some lifelong friends and earned enough money to help pay for my degree. Despite everything, I’m glad I got to try it on. It may not have been the right life for me, but it played a pivotal role in me becoming who I am today. And who I am today feels like it might be the perfect fit. 

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