'Girl Model' is a documentary about a thirteen year old model from Siberia named Nadia. She is taken to Tokyo to book modeling jobs, but struggles living by herself new environment with almost no support. After weeks of attending go-sees, the models have opportunities to book jobs. She has yet to book a single job even though her agents promised her two modeling shoots before she arrived. Her agents have been withholding information from her and encourage her to lie about her age to book jobs. Nadia is told that if she gains weight (they measure her every month) her contract will end and she will have to go home. This documentary is eye-opening and gives the audience a peek inside the harsh modeling world. They compare Nadia and other models to modeling scouts like Ashley, who is a former model turned modeling scout.
"Girl Model is good—excellent, actually—but in a way, that’s beside the point, except for how skillfully it makes the point that much of modeling is child labor, pure and simple, through telling the story of Nadya (the Siberian girl) and Ashley (her American scout, a former model herself). Much of the time when we bemoan the youth imperative in the modeling industry, we’re bemoaning it as consumers: Isn’t it a pity that women are pushed to aspire to look like done-up 13-year-old girls from Eastern Europe? And yes, it is, of course it is. But if this documentary looks at those questions, it does so only obliquely; instead, it gives us the industry as experienced by its workers. I’d say “as experienced from the inside,” except that the people who appear to be its biggest decisionmakers—the agents and clients—give only superficial (though at times painfully revealing) time to the camera." -The New Inquiry
No comments:
Post a Comment