Diary of a model

Lily spends her days as a model, rushing from shoot to show and then to another casting. On Amayzine, she tells you all about what her life is really like. Under a different name, of course, but that means she can share all the juicy details. This week: you can't keep doing this your whole life.

It's all very nice and lovely that modeling work, but you can't keep doing it forever, can you? At some point, you get too old. What are you going to do when your looks fade or you get too fat? Have you thought about a plan B?

So sweet how people always worry about what I can do when I become ugly, wrinkled, fat, and old. These are things I can't even think about with my tiny model brain. Planning that far ahead just isn't in the cards for models. Luckily, all the normal ‘non-model people’ have their lives completely mapped out, with a full alphabet of plans.

But well, after some urging, I made my brain work really hard and came to the conclusion that after my 28th, I will either move back in with my parents or marry a very rich man. Oh, and besides that, there are a few other things I've thought of.

The study

During my second year of modeling, I got so fed up with the question of whether I should study that I enrolled in the first ‘well-okay-study’ I saw at the Open University: psychology. I find people interesting, the mind, and I find human behavior interesting. One and one is five in my opinion, so I signed up. It took a lot of discipline because there are no lectures, and you have to do it with a book, a website, and an exam. I passed those exams with beautiful grades (incredible but true). But after two subjects, I had enough, moved to London, and it was finito for psychology.

In the meantime, I found a study that I really find very interesting and fun. Again, it takes a lot of discipline (because it's again at the Open University), but so far, I'm doing very well. If I have to work a lot, I study a bit slower. And in a quiet period, I spend days in the library. That song ‘Beauty and the brains’? I can't imagine anything else but that it's inspired by me.

Qualities

After five years of working and traveling full-time, you have gained quite a bit of work experience and qualities. You develop good ‘people skills’; not only because you have to work and network with many different people, but also because as a model, you have to sense and understand what the client wants. Additionally, you sometimes have more than ten applications a day. In modeling terms, that's called doing castings, but basically, you're non-stop busy selling yourself. And trust me when I say: if I can sell myself, I can sell anything.

You learn at a young age to work in a team and to build long-term relationships with clients and agencies. I have now become a pro at time management and punctuality, which unfortunately means I always have to wait. But hey, I definitely have patience.

My body has meanwhile been trained to dance around in summer dresses at five degrees or in winter coats at thirty degrees, and I no longer know shame.

Career progression

And then there are of course the professions that many girls transition into. For example, you can stand behind the camera if you are too old and ugly to stand in front of it. Or you can work as a stylist. Some models start their own production companies because if anyone knows what is needed on a location shoot, it's an ex-model (blankets and heat patches, please!).
With an enormous network within the creative fashion scene, it's very easy to start as a hostess somewhere. And then there are of course girls who replace the photo camera with a film camera. As an actress, they need people of all kinds and ages.

So you see: there is still hope for me and all other models. And if it all doesn't work out, I am sure my parents would love to have a little child at home again, even if that child has become a wrinkled, old ex-model.

Kisses from Lily XX