So...my first shoot ever, for V Man Magazine. The call time was 9am. Wanting to make sure I didn't get lost and miss it-- and because Tyra says "If you're early you're on time, if you're on time you're late"-- I walk in at about 8:30. Which I didn't think was terribly early, until I arrived and a guy unloading boxes promptly said something along the lines of "Shit, you're early."
Turns out my agency had just TOLD me the call time was 9-- it was really 10. They said an hour early to make sure I got there. Which I honestly appreciated, since it was reassuring that these people were genuinely looking out for me and not just sending me off unsupervised to get my clothes taken off.
After half an hour of reading some random fashion magazine (actually I think it was GQ), a few other models show up. One of them I actually recognize-- not from having met before (this was my first shoot) but from the copious amounts of Googling I did of my booker when they recruited me. After all, I needed to make sure they were legit. And not, like, gonna sell me into the sex slave trade or something.
It was a weird feeling though, seeing this guy who'd just been plastered all over my computer screen and then meeting him in person. Kind of how I imagine people who go to those porn conventions must feel when they meet one of their favorite starlets.
Okay, maybe not EXACTLY the same.
Eventually it's time to start, and I'm the first one to get hair done and get dressed. The former went great. The latter began with the stylist wagging his finger up and down at me and making a whistling sound, which I now know in Stylist Speak means "strip to your underwear pants." Not a problem at all-- it's how I spent a good 90% of my college years. As soon as I'm down to those underwear pants though, I'm immediately set upon by two of the stylist's assistants as if they're a pair of those birds from Finding Nemo.
One of them puts a big green coat on me, the other a pair of capri pants. Then they both help me into a pair of giant Gladiator-esque sandals. Nevermind that this outfit makes no practical sense for any known region on planet Earth. Because it's when both girls bend down to lace me up for apparent battle against a Bengal Tiger that the problems start...
See, it's about noon. I've been sitting for at least 3 and 1/2 hours, and that doesn't include the train ride to get there. And I never thought to take my shoes off at any point, because I had no idea when we'd be starting, and who the fuck just randomly takes their shoes off anyway?
Regardless, this means that my feet smell. Like...terrible. And suddenly they're being set upon by two beautiful young interns.
And it's not like they don't notice either. They do. One of them literally busts out laughing-- one of those laughs you try to hold in, like you're about to throw up, but you just can't and you end up puke-laughing all over the feet of the model you're kneeling in front of.
Despite this foot problem, the show must on. I'm led into a tiny box, where a Shall-Remain-Unnamed but Apparently-Very-Famous photographer is ready to shoot me next to what looks like a giant Lego. He instructs me to relax and lean back against the Lego, and now the problem has become that this big rectangular block is not at all bolted to the ground, and in fact looks about ready to topple over before I even touch it.
I am fucking scared shitless at this point though, so I don't bring up this otherwise wildly essential obstacle to doing what I'm told. Rather, to give the illusion of leaning back, I simply put all my weight onto my quads instead of the Lego-- which aside from impressing every single lady reading this right now (wink wink, hush hush, let's bang later)...means that a good percentage of my focus is simply on not falling over backward. Which is hard enough as it is.
But twenty minutes and a plethora of pouty faces later and it's over. My quads can breath again. I'm moved out of the box and back into the hands of the seagulls to be systematically disrobed.
This is an interesting thing about shoots (and shows and fittings and the like). There tends to be primarily two ways that stylists/their assistants handle putting clothes on you. There's the wait-and-see approach-- which I think is actually a military term that I just completely ruined for all mankind by applying to fashion-- whereby the stylist instructs you to put on a portion of an outfit, and leaves you to do so by yourself. In some ways this makes you feel like a self-respecting adult who can dress themselves, until that inevitable moment when you notice the outfit features 3 arm sleeves and no place for your head, and you plummet from self-respecting adult to confused 6-year-old. Then there's the hands-on approach, whereby the stylist just assumes you're 6 years old from the start and does everything his or herself. Both methods tend to be equal parts helpful/humiliating.
It's the second approach that the assistants opt to go with this time, possibly in an attempt to get me/my feet the hell out of there. As one begins the unenviable task of unbuckling my Spartan footware, the other begins to pull down my capris (or flood pants, or shorts, or whatever the fuck you wanna call them). They're so tight, though, that as she takes them down my underwear begins to go with them.
Before I can do anything to stop it, the pants drop to my knees, the underwear to my thighs...and I'm suddenly standing there basically naked in front of two girls who are at eye-level with my crotch. Plus the stylist, plus two hairstylist onlookers, plus a female model getting makeup done, plus the Famous-to-Me male model I'd just met.
And that was my introduction to modeling.
Same thing, only now I'm the one in pink.
