Here’s an extract from my book, How Not to be a Supermodel. It’s taken from a chapter about model castings and the physical/sporting skills I lied about having in order to try and bag some work. Could I play the drums, for example? Sure:
Was I a pro-level ice-skater? Er, yes:
They were necessary little white lies, by the way, because I was in possession of virtually no physical skills whatsoever – I couldn’t jet-ski or surf, ride horses or even swim underwater – and had I not gone down the “fake it until you make it” route I’d have ruled out half of my job prospects.
In this chapter I end up in some compromising – yet strangely zen – positions and completely lose any shred of dignity I thought I had.
And so, without further ado: an extract (abridged) from How Not to be a Supermodel.
When it came to model castings, I was happy to give almost anything a go in the name of a hefty paycheque. There were plenty of skills that were in high demand, usually ones I didn’t possess. Not that it mattered, apparently.
‘Babe,’ my agent, Texana, would say, ‘can you ski? It’s for Breitling watches and you need to be able to slalom down into shot.’
‘I’ve never skied,’ I said, ‘no.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘Babe, anyone can ski. Just tell them you used to ski as a kid, you’ll be fine.’
‘OK but when I get the job, surely I’ll then have to actually ski?’
‘We’ll deal with that if it comes to it.’
Or,
‘Hi darling,’ my other agent would say, ‘can you drive a scooter? . . .OK, but if push came to shove?’
The worst ‘sporting pretender’ casting I did was one for a newly launched women’s sportswear brand and their range of yoga garments. And the fault, this time, was entirely with me.
‘Babe, do you do yoga?’ Texana asked when I phoned to check in for the next day’s appointments.
‘Nope, but my mum teaches it.’
There was a pause.
‘OK babe, but . . . do you do yoga? It’s just that for this casting, you’ll have to go through a series of poses so you kind of need to know the lingo.’
‘Yeah, I can do the positions,’ I said, ‘the stretching up and the crossed legs. I can probably still do a headstand.’
‘Right . . .’ said Texana. ‘I just . . . I’m wary of having a repeat of the beer commercial situation.’
‘Where I did the Karate Kid moves?’
‘Oh my God, babe, what the hell. They said it was like watching someone drop acid and then try to fight themselves in a hall of mirrors.’
‘Huh,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure I practise some yoga positions then.’
‘Poses, my babe,’ said Texana. ‘They’re called poses.’
‘Fear not,’ I said. ‘I’m limbering up as we speak. Going in for the warrior dog and the downward spiral.’
The yoga casting took place in a dance studio, beautifully bright with sunshine streaming in through two full-length windows, reflected from a wall of mirrors onto the wooden floor. The clients, three friendly women in their thirties or perhaps forties were seated behind a table that was piled with model portfolios. They looked very serene, hair loosely pulled into ballerina buns or flowing onto shoulders, all of them clothed in the sort of soft fabrics and gentle colours that make your own clothes look as though they’ve been stolen from an eighteenth-century vampire.
‘Lovely to meet you, Ruth,’ the first client said. ‘We’ve been desperate to book you for a campaign so it’s brilliant that this yoga range could be a good fit. You’ve got exactly the look that we want.’
‘We’ll start with the warrior pose,’ said client number two, putting on some spa music.
Warrior pose? What an earth was this? Couldn’t they just see me in the leggings and crop top and be satisfied with that? Surely on the shoot day someone could just arrange my legs and arms?
‘It’s important for us,’ said client number three, ‘that whoever we use genuinely practises yoga.’
Oh.
‘We really want the campaign to feel authentic and for the images to call out to our customers – we’re not just a brand using models who look good in our clothes, we’re a brand using models who will wear our clothing in real life. Actual sportswomen, athletes, mountaineers, and you, hopefully, as our experienced yogi.’
Wait. What?
‘Yogi?’
‘Let’s get started and see how the samples look,’ said client two. ‘I can’t wait to try the taupe harem pants on you.’
For warrior, I pretended to hold a spear in one hand and put the other on my hip. In fairness, it wasn’t a million miles away from the correct pose: I’d put my legs in a strong, wide-apart stance that looked relatively convincing, actually. Bending forward pose was pretty self-explanatory and, miraculously, I actually knew the bridge. It was when the other poses, the more abstract names, came along that the shit really hit the proverbial fan. Who would ever have thought that ‘mountain pose’ would be ‘standing up straight’? What mountain is tall and thin and not large and round, like a boulder? Which would obviously make more sense, explaining completely why a person would think that they should turn themselves into a big ball, hugging their knees and tucking their head between their legs . . .
‘OK,’ said client two, with just the slightest tremor of confusion in her voice, ‘let’s move on to the downward- facing dog.’
I mean, how would a dog face downwards? Isn’t it already mostly down-facing, due to the fact that it walks on four legs?
‘That’s more the cow pose,’ said client one, ‘but with four straight legs. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it like that but OK. Let’s now move into the child’s pose.’
Well. Even under such intense pressure my mind was spraying out ideas left right and centre, God bless it. It had sensed extreme career danger and had risen to the occasion, providing pose solutions to each and every prompt with only ever a second or two’s hesitation. It was as though I was on a weird version of Charades Mastermind, in which the presenter called out a random word and I had to work out which action might possibly – as in, a one in a thousand chance – be the correct match.
Never had my mind and body had to work so hard as one. And now, after the cow and the downward dog and a mountain pose and a boat pose (which I had been pretty pleased with, seeing as though I’d managed to use my arms as oars and one leg as a mast) I had one last challenge. The child’s pose.
‘Do . . . you need any help?’ asked client three, as I stood quietly upon the mat, eyes closed, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Buying time.
‘No,’ I said, eyes still closed, hands over my ears, because it just felt right, ‘I’m fine thanks, I’m doing some breathwork before I do the next position.’
What poses did children do? There was the foetal sleeping position, which didn’t seem stretchy enough to be a yoga pose and so was my least favoured option, and then I had thought about skipping. But you couldn’t hold a skipping pose, or skip in slow motion, unless you wanted to look like a complete fruitcake, so that one wasn’t likely either. Children liked to climb trees, but I’d done the tree pose with my branches stretched out and my toes wriggling into the floor like roots (nice touch!) and so what were the chances they’d get me to repeat myself? No, it would have to be my fourth choice and I was pretty confident about it because so far, they hadn’t asked me for either of my solid, tried-and-tested yoga moves. And I wasn’t mad keen on doing a headstand in front of them, and so I dropped down into the most childish pose of all, the position that all under-tens must adopt for hours in the schooling week, in a hall stinking of boiled vegetables: sitting cross-legged.
‘Er,’ said client one.
‘Uhm,’ said number two.
‘I’m not sure that’s quite the one we’re after,’ said client three, as I clumsily rose to standing position, or ‘normal pose’.
‘It’s alright,’ I said, ‘I know that my type of yoga’s not for everyone.’
How Not to be a Supermodel is available in hardback, ebook and audiobook here. If you’re not in the UK, please note that Waterstones deliver worldwide. At time of writing there are a limited number of signed first editions available at Toppings here.
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