You may wonder why I still eagerly applied.
I wondered, too. It doesn't make much sense to be enthusiastic about a job that wouldn't pay me and also wouldn't be documented for my portfolio. What would I even be getting out of it?
But there's something about filling a real, non-fabricated need. Sure, I'm not getting paid, but there are real stakes to the opportunity—it was modeling for a makeup artist instructor demonstrating a particular makeup look for her students.
It just doesn't feel the same to arrange my own photoshoots, without having some purpose or need I'm addressing. Though if I had gotten the gig (I didn't—she had already found someone hours before I had seen it and messaged her), I would have gladly done just that: messaged some photographers asking if they'd like to collaborate on a shoot together later that day, since I'd already have professional hair and makeup done. I'm not exactly sure why that feels different, but it does.
Perhaps it's not just the stakes. Perhaps it's the feeling of being granted permission.
If I arrange a shoot myself, who the hell am I to think it's a worthy endeavor to photograph my face for two hours?
If someone else deems me worthy of doing so, however? Well, then don't mind if I do!
I've been thinking a lot about this idea of needing permission. I, like many others, have wanted to be a model for many, many years. For several of those years, I resigned myself to the fact that the only way to get there is to be plucked from obscurity by a modeling scout or agency, thus having the privilege of being a model bestowed upon you.
Then a few years later, I decided to try out for some modeling opportunities myself and see what happened. The result surprised me: I began walking runway after runway. I ditched the notion of needing permission and reveled in my newfound amateur success.
And amateur it was—though I was succeeding at my goal of Doing Modeling, I wasn't getting any money for it (it was a glorious day the first time I booked a paid gig, two years after I began, earning a whopping $75 for a 12+ hour day).
I have loved it regardless of the lack of pay, but I've been starting to feel that ceiling again, where in order to progress, someone needs to grant me permission to do so.
Late last year, I ran into a model friend who has been feeling similar. She's 19, with luscious dark hair framing her soft features that would never be turned down for being "too high-fashion" and wouldn't look out of place in a royal portrait of any era. We had met for the first time back in August at a casting—her first ever, and my first in Germany. We were both cast for several shows, the first of which was the very next day. Over the next two weeks, we walked for maybe three dozen different designers, and I watched her inexperience melt away with every 30-second backstage quick-change.
As I caught up with her, she confided that she had thought for sure that those two weeks would end with her getting Noticed, and that surely agencies would be clamoring to sign her. I told her sometimes it just takes time. Everyone trying to be a model feels like it's "already too late," including her. Maybe she'd have the same experience as me, but I had a feeling if anyone would make it, she would. I think she thought I was just being nice when I jokingly told her to remember me when she's famous.
I'm seeing her again tomorrow—we're both booked to model for one of the same designers we worked with in those fateful two weeks in August. This time, I'll congratulate her for her newly-announced signing with a modeling agency. It did just take some time—and not even that much of it.
Sometimes, we wait for permission to follow our dreams, and it's granted. Sometimes we wait and wait and wait and it just never comes.
I'm a bit tired of waiting now, so I think I'll try my hand at searching for a different route. One where I can find both stakes and permission on my own terms.
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