I have my reasons, call it my defense, be careful what you're wishing
The Modelling Thing
People occasionally ask me about this, so here's my swift, blanket reply. I've decided (at least for now) to abandon the modelling thing. Here's why:
(1) It's time-intensive. I started building a portfolio last year, when I was a bit at loose ends. I'm still a bit at loose ends, but I have a lot more taking up my time.
(2) I thought I could deal with it, but I've grown progressively more uneasy at the concept that a corporation could own my appearance. If I were to market myself well enough to sign a modelling contract, it's likely that I'd be, for example, not allowed to cut or dye my hair, or get more piercings or tattoos, or whatever, without the agency's permission; I'd certainly be required (or at least entirely expected) to keep myself utterly shaved; et cetera. I have no intention of dyeing my hair or getting more piercings, for example, but it's the principle of the thing; and I really hate shaving, less for any grand feminist reasons than because it's time-intensive, inconvenient, and weird-feeling. It all just doesn't seem worth it.
(2b) Models don't own the photographs taken of them; photographers, or corporations, do. And models, unless they are hugely famous, are not likely to be able to demand the rights to any photographs, even if they, realistically, did most of the creation process (at least, not unless they like, pay the photographer to do the shoot). The famous Clockwork Orange shoot, for example (ref. my user icon) was entirely my idea, used my clothes / makeup skills / etc. -- more of it was me than the photographer, but he still owns the rights to the pictures. (I'm allowed to use them for "self-promotion" only, which I suspect means that even posting it to my LiveJournal could bring him down on me if he heard about it and thought the image worth protecting.)
(3) It is the fate of every Western woman to be hideously self-conscious about her appearance, but I swear I've gotten even more hideously self-conscious since I started building the modelling portfolio, and that really gets to me. Sure, I always disliked getting zits, and I always felt weird when I gained weight, but now every mark on my face or extra pound feels like a Terrible Crime OMG!!11 The whole project has even managed to make me feel worse about things it never previously occurred to me to hate myself for, like the way I walk. Yes, I could make myself completely perfect; I could take really obscenely good care of my skin, wear ridiculous amounts of makeup, be really obscenely careful about what I eat, and so on; but the idea that I'd have to for the sake of my career makes me feel sick. It's brutal and poisonous to focus on your appearance in our psychotically youth-oriented, plastic-surgery'd society, and I do it too much already (maybe not that much, comparatively, but argh, it feels like too much).
None of these are particularly principled reasons; I don't think modelling is inherently unfeminist or anything, for example. It's conceivable that I could do it in the future, I guess, if I decided my skin were clear enough and it was worth perfecting my hair in a salon and my teeth really needed whitening and suchlike. But I'm not getting any younger (I know that sounds insane, but it is actually highly applicable in the modelling field), so it seems progressively more unlikely.
...
* Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.
* Drawing is the root of everything.
~ Van Gogh, quoted at the exhibit at the Met last year
* Life is pretty simple. You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do some more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
* It is my intention to first cite experience, then show by reasoning why the experience is constrained to act in this manner.
~ Leonardo da Vinci, quoted at the Museum of Science and Industry exhibit earlier this year
* Wagner is the Puccini of music.
* Palestinians are the Jews of the 21st century.
~ the Metaphors and Jokes lecture I attended for free like two months after I moved to Chicago
...
I am so going to accidentally misattribute all these links ... oh well, here goes .... I accidentally deleted a huge chunk of as-yet-unposted links recently, which is a shame, but I feel like it's a bigger shame that I deleted a bunch of attributions, too.
Top 10 Things Food Companies Don't Want You To Know
I actually didn't know some of these. Forwarding them to my house caused one housemate to observe that he didn't trust the dude who wrote it, who seems cavalier about sources, but another said that he's seen actual studies on everything but the aspartame thing, so take that as you will.
uh ... arisrabkin maybe?
They are doing a movie version of Sweeney Todd
... and you will never guess who "they" are. It's going to be ridiculously, retardedly, awesomely excellent beyond all words.
definitely from jtwonderdog.
An Exploration of The Experiences of Women in Role-Playing Games
This study was a critical, archetypal, feminist ethnography and psychological inquiry into the experiences of women in tabletop role-playing gaming and its culture. Informed by performance ethnographic practice and the spirit of these games, it is written as an adventurous journey into and encounter with these experiences based on participant observation, interviews with gaming professionals, an online questionnaire of 428 gamers, and series of interviews with female gamers.
from the lovely artiephesus.
People occasionally ask me about this, so here's my swift, blanket reply. I've decided (at least for now) to abandon the modelling thing. Here's why:
(1) It's time-intensive. I started building a portfolio last year, when I was a bit at loose ends. I'm still a bit at loose ends, but I have a lot more taking up my time.
(2) I thought I could deal with it, but I've grown progressively more uneasy at the concept that a corporation could own my appearance. If I were to market myself well enough to sign a modelling contract, it's likely that I'd be, for example, not allowed to cut or dye my hair, or get more piercings or tattoos, or whatever, without the agency's permission; I'd certainly be required (or at least entirely expected) to keep myself utterly shaved; et cetera. I have no intention of dyeing my hair or getting more piercings, for example, but it's the principle of the thing; and I really hate shaving, less for any grand feminist reasons than because it's time-intensive, inconvenient, and weird-feeling. It all just doesn't seem worth it.
(2b) Models don't own the photographs taken of them; photographers, or corporations, do. And models, unless they are hugely famous, are not likely to be able to demand the rights to any photographs, even if they, realistically, did most of the creation process (at least, not unless they like, pay the photographer to do the shoot). The famous Clockwork Orange shoot, for example (ref. my user icon) was entirely my idea, used my clothes / makeup skills / etc. -- more of it was me than the photographer, but he still owns the rights to the pictures. (I'm allowed to use them for "self-promotion" only, which I suspect means that even posting it to my LiveJournal could bring him down on me if he heard about it and thought the image worth protecting.)
(3) It is the fate of every Western woman to be hideously self-conscious about her appearance, but I swear I've gotten even more hideously self-conscious since I started building the modelling portfolio, and that really gets to me. Sure, I always disliked getting zits, and I always felt weird when I gained weight, but now every mark on my face or extra pound feels like a Terrible Crime OMG!!11 The whole project has even managed to make me feel worse about things it never previously occurred to me to hate myself for, like the way I walk. Yes, I could make myself completely perfect; I could take really obscenely good care of my skin, wear ridiculous amounts of makeup, be really obscenely careful about what I eat, and so on; but the idea that I'd have to for the sake of my career makes me feel sick. It's brutal and poisonous to focus on your appearance in our psychotically youth-oriented, plastic-surgery'd society, and I do it too much already (maybe not that much, comparatively, but argh, it feels like too much).
None of these are particularly principled reasons; I don't think modelling is inherently unfeminist or anything, for example. It's conceivable that I could do it in the future, I guess, if I decided my skin were clear enough and it was worth perfecting my hair in a salon and my teeth really needed whitening and suchlike. But I'm not getting any younger (I know that sounds insane, but it is actually highly applicable in the modelling field), so it seems progressively more unlikely.
...
* Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.
* Drawing is the root of everything.
~ Van Gogh, quoted at the exhibit at the Met last year
* Life is pretty simple. You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do some more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
* It is my intention to first cite experience, then show by reasoning why the experience is constrained to act in this manner.
~ Leonardo da Vinci, quoted at the Museum of Science and Industry exhibit earlier this year
* Wagner is the Puccini of music.
* Palestinians are the Jews of the 21st century.
~ the Metaphors and Jokes lecture I attended for free like two months after I moved to Chicago
...
I am so going to accidentally misattribute all these links ... oh well, here goes .... I accidentally deleted a huge chunk of as-yet-unposted links recently, which is a shame, but I feel like it's a bigger shame that I deleted a bunch of attributions, too.
Top 10 Things Food Companies Don't Want You To Know
I actually didn't know some of these. Forwarding them to my house caused one housemate to observe that he didn't trust the dude who wrote it, who seems cavalier about sources, but another said that he's seen actual studies on everything but the aspartame thing, so take that as you will.
uh ... arisrabkin maybe?
They are doing a movie version of Sweeney Todd
... and you will never guess who "they" are. It's going to be ridiculously, retardedly, awesomely excellent beyond all words.
definitely from jtwonderdog.
An Exploration of The Experiences of Women in Role-Playing Games
This study was a critical, archetypal, feminist ethnography and psychological inquiry into the experiences of women in tabletop role-playing gaming and its culture. Informed by performance ethnographic practice and the spirit of these games, it is written as an adventurous journey into and encounter with these experiences based on participant observation, interviews with gaming professionals, an online questionnaire of 428 gamers, and series of interviews with female gamers.
from the lovely artiephesus.