Model Behaviour: The Result

Yes, I've decided to write this blog in the format of a tv talent contest. So, as you're all aware, last week our contestants attended a casting for a high profile shoot at a prestigious hair salon. They were put through their paces - quite literally - poked, prodded, photographed, interrogated, in some cases humiliated. The judges have been poring over polaroids all week, but now the results are in, and I can exclusively reveal that......I wasn't chosen to go through to the next round. Well, I assume I wasn't, since the shoot was on Friday and I wasn't informed of it until yesterday, so if they did pick me that was a hell of an administrative oversight.

Now is the point when I should be congratulating the winner, handing her a celebratory bunch of flowers....Screw that, if I had a bouquet I'd ram it down her throat. Yes, readers, there's a twist in the tale yet: the winner was my arch-rival, my stylist's new model. In three years I've never been able to give him a window, then one day she just walks in off the street...Now I know how Anne Boleyn felt.

(Un)Fortunately, this show is like the more latterday series of Big Brother, and just because a contestant is out, it doesn't mean they're out for good. I may be called back. Turns out the casting was for the catwalk show as well and tabloid rumours persist - producers emphasise that these are just rumours and you'll have to wait and see what happens for yourself in the next tension-packed episode - that I'm still being considered for that. It's all down to a leaked photograph of me that my mole on the inside saw stuck to a wall under a mysterious headline.

So it may be something and it may be nothing, but I'm back to waiting for a call. I do hope I get one. Partially because it's always nice to be chosen for something, even if it's not exactly what you wanted, partially because the shows can be quite lucrative and to say I need the cash would be an understatement. But I still had a sniffle yesterday when I got the news. It's silly because rejection is the name of this particular game and I knew that when I signed up, but this isn't just a random job I went for - I'm used to never hearing back from them. This was the same job that I've been up for half a dozen times and I've never got it. I've been working for (insert name of famous hair chain here, I'm not supposed to tell you myself) for three years and I've been picked for a couple of shows, a couple of presentations, not all of them paid either, but it was all towards the goal of getting that picture in the window. But I keep getting turned down flat, despite that I've basically dedicated my life to them for three years, had more cuts and colours than I can actually keep up with, and that kind of rejection is a lot more personal. It's a destructive kind of relationship; like a boyfriend who keeps dumping you so he can sleep with other women then taking you back when he gets bored.

What's bothering me more though, is the fact that they'll happily have me walk down the catwalk for them, but they shy away from using me for any kind of promotion that would involve people getting a close-up of my face. I'm aware that's a quite neurotic way of thinking about it, but the truth is I've long suspected that I've only ever got into this business off the back of the fact that I'm freakishly tall and thin, not because I've got the face for it, and that that's the behind the arrested development of my career. So this kind of serves as confirmation of that.

It doesn't sound like it, but I'm not actually moaning too much. I enjoy modelling, so getting to do any at all is great, and adds a much needed veneer of glamour to my otherwise terminally dull life. And like I said, I really hope I do get a call about this show. Just don't think this industry's all flattery, because it's not. I was insecure about my looks before I started modelling and I still am. And don't answer anyone in the same position as me moaning about their appearance with "But you're a model, you must be attractive!", because we will go into great detail explaining that striking (read weird/unusual) trumps attractive in the modelling world (which incidentally is the response that should be given to the people on the Daily Fail comments always saying they don't understand why Kate Moss is a model because they've "seen better looking girls working in Tesco"), and that a feature that is attractive in the modelling world, like extreme height, or even a big nose or gap teeth (Erin O'Connor, Lara Stone) does not always translate as well in the "real" life, where beauty is, contrary to popular criticism, much more narrowly defined. And possibly that you don't have to have the whole package to be a model if you have one desirable feature and are willing to work hard (though whether or not you'll ever make it to the cover of Vogue that way I guess is yet to be conclusively proved). And while that may dent the perfect façade of modelling, it's a good thing.

So yeah, here's hoping for a call.

UPDATE: Yeah, I didn't get a call.