The ugly truth behind beautiful world of modelling

Many young women aspire to be successful models for the exciting career path, celebrity status, fashionable clothes, possible wealth and jet-setting job opportunities.

However, the journey to a modelling career can be a long, difficult and frustrating one due to heavy competition and rigorous modelling beauty standards.

In Tanzania, Millen Magesse and Flaviana Matata have managed to carve out a career to become international models.

These two started off as winners of Miss World Tanzania and Miss Universe Tanzania respectively.

Given the success these two have recorded, and the precedent they’ve set, many young girls in Tanzania are choosing modelling as a career.

To most of these girls, it’s a highway to fame, fortune and a one way ticket to lucrative deals in the US and the rest of the developed world.

It is a career with limited opportunities with several challenges that the girls have to overcome.

And just like any other creative industry rejection is part of the game which unfortunately not many are ready to take.

Elsewhere models such as Naomi Campbell is every girl’s dream who in 2010 came to the limelight at the trial in The Hague after her encounter  with jailed former Liberian War Lord Charles Taylor.

In her evidence, delivered in the hushed, transatlantic drawl which she has cultivated over the years, the model then proceeded to give her version of the events of the night of September 25, 1997, when she had dined with both Taylor and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

But her story of how she got diamonds was vague and the events of that September night was contradicted by a woman who for more than 20 years had been Naomi’s ‘surrogate mother’, Carole White who had sat at her charge’s side that night over dinner.

What on earth happened to her? ‘The industry and the lifestyle changed her,’ wonders Carole who started working with Naomi at the age of 16.

 “At 16  these girls are mixing with actors, make-up artists, hairdressers, and they are all older than  them. In those days, it was always Concorde, you know?”

According to her most of these models become used to a luxurious lifestyle, and once they’re used to that then there is no going back to economy.

“So money becomes important and your gauge of what’s valuable is different, because you’re staying in suites, you are meeting presidents such as Obama and high profile corporate people, and so everything is not normal.”

And it is not all glamour as most people think as the girls cannot even afford to date quality boyfriends.

 “We take our duty of care seriously. But girls freak out, mainly because of boyfriends. You’d think these girls would have handsome boyfriends, but they don’t,” she says.

“They date short men who are insecure and who become very controlling as they fear losing these girls who are always travelling, always meeting new -people. That can be a nightmare.”

And to add to that the modelling world is fast changing, so is the quality of girls who make the grades.

  ‘We have changed. I now look for girls with breasts, and that is something we wouldn’t have countenanced 10 years ago. Our biggest demand in the last couple of years has been for a D cup, but obviously you have to have a really fit body.

“Now, we talk to our models about nutrition, make sure they have a personal trainer. Even our language has changed. A decade ago, we would have just said: “Don’t eat!” ’

But the question that stands out like a sore toe is how lucrative is modelling for these new girls?

“If she is hot, and does the key shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris, she can earn £10,000 to £20,000.”

This sounds a lot of cash for four weeks’ work, but it can mean 20 appointments a day — castings and fittings, as well as the shows themselves — straight off the plane. ‘That’s why I tell the girls they need to be as fit as Olympic athletes to make it,’ Carole says. ‘After New York, I have girls who are crying with exhaustion.’

She says the fees in London are the lowest on the circuit.

 ‘The fee for an established designer is £370 per girl, per show. A new designer might pay a girl £100.’ Who pays for the flights, the hotels, the cars? ‘We do, but it’s an advance against the girl’s earnings,’ says Carole, who also takes a percentage of their earnings.

That is why the girls rush from one show to another given the debt they are racking up, and might break down in tears in a strange city, be prey to men circling them like vultures.