A witch in swan lake make up ran conducted the torturious routine we had established during the past five hours. I swallowed my shame as she called out in sinaporean slang “body forward, stick your ass up” and forgot my dignity as she passed comments on my rather curvatious stomach. Ok, so I wouldn’t have picked me for a lingerie shoot either, but I had blindly accepted the challenge two days earlier and was only now realising that a great picture could not be achived through determination or intelligent posing. You simply had to have a great body when you were a clothes horse for frightening and elaborate designs using material thinner than their tissue paper wrappings.
My worst fears about my body were confirmed and confirmed again as I repeated poses in one set after another. Full length, midlength, close up bra, back of bra, close up bra detail, leg and pant shot, mid lenth pant shot, close up panties, reverse panties. In that order it went on and on. The photographer now limited each pose to one shot only and we exchanged long suffering glances as she pushed us to fit in as many as possible before 6pm, although she obviously didn’t care that we got a ten minute break for a lunch of cereal bar and that my feet were sticky and scabbed from unstable and ill fitting vintage gold heels belonging to my mother which I had brought along to wear.
Tips for posing. For the legs, the old tried and tested poses work. Think maralyn Monroe with her legs crossed at the ankle. In undies you don’t want to send out the wrong message. Potential woman customers are going to see them and they don’t want to feel seduced by you; they want to think they will look the same way or better in their new La Perla set.
Which brings me to the designers of the underwear. Why, honestly, bring out so many variations of the same thing? It was a lot of hard work for me and I’m sure these people aren’t going to bother looking at some stranger and go “oh yes, the extra line of stitching on the bra really makes it stand out… I’ll buy that one!”
Seriously though. i’m not even sure if they will bother using my pictures. My body is so unconventional- totally pear shaped. Though they did seem to be on a rather miserly budget. They were trying to shoot their entire collection in a single day, and to top it, all of their mismatched bits of random sized lingerie (I am an A cup and I had to try to show off a C cup more than a few times.) still had their price tags on. Although they had enough money to hire a spotty teenage assistant solely to cut off the tags and then re attatch them after with plastic thread. I wonder if anyone else had worn them before me. I hope I don’t catch any diseases. I would just like to reassure everyone now that I personally don’t have anything like that.
My pure motivation for doing this is not self belief or a pressing vanity that my body and face needs to be seen, it is just for the money. $200 of it today, which will last about one day in the UK, or buy me one set of sailing clothes. It is worth it for this small piece of independence, my wages feeding or clothing me for a few days anyway. My mobile bad been buzzing all day collecting messages, and I got home exhausted and starving to find that the graduation showcase was tomorrow. I am not sure what it was either, but I had visited a university and had to try on 20 students outfits, where I then squeezed out of them after they had pinned and tucked me in. and so after missing the alarm and wasting five dollars on a taxi, I arrived sweaty and dirty with yesterdays make up. The only way it was bearable staying till 5pm that day was another model, Lyze. She was from tennassee and has an outrageous personality, her impressions of people she had met were unaffected and endearing, and we laughed uncontrollably most of the time.
Another model was very beautiful, but also explained in slurred monotone speech that she was deaf from birth. I was absolutely amazed that she could lip read almost every word I said. When she didn’t understand, she told me, because everybody speaks differently, she asked me to draw the letters on her hand. That way I showed her my name and told her I worked I n a Jazz bar as a waitress. she loved that. I am quite sure she comes from a very distinguished family because of her good looks and her education which includes hip hop dance and I feel like we’re all in this together. The last model, called Niki, is from Russia. She wanted to study art in Singapore but they said her English is not good enough yet so she has to wait another year. She was very reserved, telling the bare minimum with me initiating all the conversations. Usually I am the one who plays that role but I suddenly became the chatterbox.
At 5.10 me and Niki left to visit the agency and another casting. I hadn’t seen her eat anything all day except two Coke zeros, and don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t scary thin, about the same weight as me though her waist was much slimmer, but she told me she was on a new diet ever since joining Imodels a month ago. We collected com cards and I showed her my apartment through the massive agency windows that overlooked central Singapore
My new found role of being the more experienced one, and the more talkative one allowed me to float through the motions dreamily we arrived at the Levi Ladies shop milling with customers and spiked with people who were here to judge the girls who came for the casting. My new confidence allowed me to demonstrate my runway walk without so much as a tremble although it caught up with me in the changing rooms as I changed out of the Levi’s jeans I had been modelling. I had been bouncy, pushed my chest out and generally been what I thought a runway model should be although my equally bouncy thighs are not the best for showing off jeans on.
Niki did the walk I did when I was less experienced. Slow and careful, nervous about the poses she held when she got to the end of the shop where people had gathered to stare at what we were doing in this very public place. My first time was for all the main designers of Burberry on Oxford Street to look at my nervous walk. Niki was lucky in that respect. I was caught out looking at her face when they were taking pictures for reference. She looked- well- really fierce. I suppose there was something about her harshly blond short hair and little lightning tattoos behind her ears but there was something fantastic about her. A few hours later it was confirmed that their nodding and approving lookes at both of us had been translated correctly, me and Niki had the job. I have to go to a fitting today at 1pm. I am not nervous any more, I don’t have enough time to be nervous.
