And I said is your agency providing a chaperone? And she said no, and I don't know if someone like that is the exception," Ziff says. "There was one girl who was from Lithuania, and she approached me after the talk and said, I'm 15, should I have a chaperone with me? And I said are you here by yourself? And she said yeah, and I said where are your parents? And and she said at home. Ziff also tells the crowd about a top model who came to the Model Alliance because her agency was keeping $50,000 from her - which is illegal - and she didn't know how to handle it.Īfter the event, she says she was approached by several girls currently on the New York Fashion Week casting circuit who are 14 or 15 years old. One girl approaches Ziff in tears after the talk because of a problem with her agency. It seems clear at this event that a lot of these girls need an advocate. Shouldn't I get paid? If you say no that means the next girl will probably say no." "If the girls who start off are like, it's not okay if we get paid in a jacket that's a sample and ripped in the back - think about it and say, if I say yes then the girl after me will say yes," she explained. At the New York shows, payment for runway modeling often comes in the form of free clothing instead of actual money. "In Paris and Milan isn't it fascinating that we get paid during the shows?" Rocha asks the audience. But they're just as easily taken advantage of as they are idolized. They have perfect skin, the kind of legs that are actually served well by a pair of underwear-sized cutoffs, and the sort of expensive-looking rumpled clothes and hair that has become fetishized by street style photographers and designers alike. This audience of young models represents what beauty will look like on the runways at New York Fashion Week, which runs through Thursday. On a recent afternoon in the dimly lit lower level of the downtown Manhattan Coffee Shop restaurant, a group of around 100 lanky, six-foot-ish, mostly teenage girls have gathered to hear Ziff and model Coco Rocha speak. The Model Alliance, a New York-based organization founded by former model Sara Ziff, is working to eradicate the kinds of injustices highlighted in the film. Some veteran models are working to change that - but these are longstanding problems, and change can only happen slowly. But these girls often miss out on a lot, like proper paychecks and health insurance - and sometimes even a say over whether or not they'll be Photoshopped in photographs to appear nude. Models' lives of world traveling, free designer clothes, and physical perfection are easy to envy from the outside. The film highlights the exploitative side of the modeling industry, populated by very young girls who travel to foreign countries to often work without chaperones or things as basic as work hour limits and monetary compensation. But she gets stuck without her parents or a chaperone in an unregulated system, doesn't get the work she was promised, and leaves Japan $2,000 in debt. Released last Wednesday in New York, the film follows a 13-year-old aspiring model plucked from her home in Siberia and sent to Tokyo to pursue a career that agents have promised will be lucrative. The documentary Girl Model tells a story that might resonate with a lot of models currently walking the runways at New York Fashion Week.
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