
By CAITLIN STOWER
There are plenty of young women who dream of becoming models.
The stuff of those dreams probably includes strolling a runway for big name designers, appearing in campaigns wearing dresses of the value of a small house and gracing the cover of Anna Wintour’s Vogue (although maybe not actually meeting Anna, that be scary).
What those dreams probably don’t include?
Being swindled by their ‘agency’ and forced to choose between starvation and money. But in an industry that values thinness, fame and dollars above health and happiness – that’s exactly what’s happening…
Founder of the Model Alliance (a not-for-profit labour group for models, based in New York City), Sara Ziff, has written a piece for The Guardian, where she revealed some of the shocking truths about what really goes on in the ‘glamorous’ world of modelling.
Ziff describes an event the Model Alliance held recently to welcome the fresh faces in the New York modelling industry. She says one woman, who was quiet throughout most of the lunch, began to speak of the mistreatment she was suffering at the hands of the agency.
Ziff writes:
Her modelling agency was withholding her earnings, she said, until she lost inches from her hips. She just wanted to get paid the money that she was owed and move to another, better agency, but she’d signed an exclusive, multi-year contract to the agency and they were sponsoring her work visa. It was either diet, or go broke.
According to Ziff, some agencies classify models as independent contractors, not employees, which means they don’t even get minimum wage protection and they can’t sue for sexual harassment.