Can everyone stop calling themselves a model? Or a journalist?

Take a random presenter from a randomly sponsored program, look at her CV and voilà, you will find the word model. Then my fingers always take over from my mind. They dance to the Google search bar, type in the name of the girl in question and the word ‘covers’ and then hit search. And then I indeed find: nothing.

De Telegraaf also sometimes uses the word to further inflate an article. Chocolate letters alone are not enough, no, no, if something has happened to a girl and she was even a little bit pretty and has ever danced on a cube (or in a cage, that works too) in a nightclub, then the word model is added to the piece. It is not said that ‘a young woman’ has experienced something, but ‘a model’. As if it is worse then. Strangely enough, they do not mention the profession when it concerns a secretary. Or a baker's wife.

Journalist and writer are also professions that people seem to freely adopt. Look at any Instagram account of women who have written a piece on their own blog and yes, they have crowned themselves as writers. I would only call myself a writer if I stood between A.F. Th. van der Heijden and Harry Mulisch with my novels (because yes, I believe you are only a writer if you have written a novel). Otherwise, I would humbly remain silent. To be allowed to carry the label journalist, you must at least have gone through journalism school. Actually, I find the title journalist only fitting for the Thomas Erdbrinken Joris Luyendijken of this world. And go ahead, Cécile Narinx may call herself a fashion journalist because she has completed journalism school, writes wonderfully and (very importantly) attaches the word fashion to journalist. This shows that you are not lying in the minefields, but rather comfortably in the front row at Louis Vuitton.

Let me remain silent about the people who call themselves ‘influencer’. Is that a job, influencing people? It seems to me a result of what you do, not a job in itself. A writer influences people. The baker does too.

Moral of my story: the fact that you have stood in front of a camera and someone has clicked on it does not make you a model. And that you can type does not immediately make you a writer. And ‘influencer’? I am so curious how you explain that at customs.