I'm Tall
People always ask me if I play basketball and tell me that they’ll start a volleyball team for me to play on. Even more often, they just say “You’re tall!” as if I didn’t notice that I’m 6’1”. These comments and suggestions often make me uncomfortable, even though I know where they’re coming from. My height, as seen by others, is an identifying quality. My stature comes with many assumptions. I must play sports, I must have gotten my height through genetics, and I must love it, right? No, not exactly. I towered over my classmates through elementary school, and I’m still unsure of my awkward limbs.
When strangers ask me if I’m a model, though, I feel less uncomfortable because yes, I am. In Memphis, I’ve walked runways, posed for covers, and shot for artists. While Memphis is not the first place you expect to be a fashion-forward city, I still immerse myself in the fashion industry on a local level as best I can. Through doing this, I gained a new identifying quality as a model. My modeling has given me many opportunities, such as meeting new people, exploring new parts of my city, and finding people who have the same interests as me. My path as a model largely differs from others who may be in larger cities and more toxic environments. I personally have felt little pressure to conform to others’ desires for me: I have never encountered the deprecating and blood-sucking atmosphere of the modeling industry in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Miami where a half-an-inch difference between measurements or blemishes on one’s face can mean that models no longer have management and cannot get jobs. While the pressure of the industry has not exactly corrupted me, as I have never been exposed to such direct criticism by any one person, some of the harmful parts of the job do affect me. I know that when I walk into a casting, I will be judged by how I look, and I have grown to be okay with it because, in the end, I signed myself up for this work.
Many people have changed their minds about me based on the work I have done as a model. For example, after I posted some of my photos on Instagram and tagged my former agent, some people became fascinated with my experiences and had many questions. I would always be excited to answer them and let others know about my interest. Modeling became my thing, and soon I was seen as a model before I was seen as me. I encountered many people, whom I had never met, asking me if I was the model they had heard about. In my school, at sports events, and in public. I soon realized that my persona as a model was introducing me to others before I could introduce myself. Being identified by many as having a controversial job comes with many stereotypes and preconceptions.
As exemplified by the media and celebrities, models are tall, skinny, and flawless girls with low IQs who galavant around the world, going to nice places to take pretty pictures while being managed by someone else. This describes quite a few girls I follow and see on social media. It always seems as if they just suddenly wound up lying in a couture gown, face full of makeup, in a flower field in France. I have grown to know the behind the scenes of such a photograph. That model has worked years to fine tune her body. She does this to the standards of casting directors and stylists. She has communicated with her representative, communicated with her designer, communicated with the magazine that cast her. On the day of the shoot, she was made up for hours in a cosmetics chair to make her face and hair seem flawless. Then, finally, she was posed like a doll and shot for multiple hours. All of this in attempt to sell a product. This is the side of modeling that no one bothers to think about. This is a process many people don't even know exists. This is the part of modeling that classifies it as a job and makes it hard work. Since most people don’t see this, the stereotypes live on and continue to follow girls in this line of work. Those prejudices are rarely based on truth. While my personal experience has been far less extreme, I still am seen to strangers as a model first. My friends are friends with that model and my sister is a model’s sister. This should not be the case. I am a person with individual qualities, and I should be defined as myself before my job. In our world, we need to take people for their whole person rather than pick and choose the qualities and labels by which we define them. One quality among a crowd of others can grow to define each of us in strangers’ eyes, but why? We need to stop this from happening.
No single aspect of a person should be representative of them. We should work hard to create a world where a religion doesn’t make up our moral character, skin color does not reflect the contents of our brains, and gender doesn’t affect our aptitude. When you take a step back and identify me, or anyone else as a whole, the picture looks different.
So, I am a model. I am also a successful high school student, a passionate runner, a big sister, and a daughter who happens to use her physical attributes to contribute to the fashion industry and become involved in her community. So no, I don’t play basketball and I really don’t want to learn how to play volleyball, but I am tall and I am a model and I love it. I am also so much more.