Model Lies - The Objectification of the American Female

Janet M. exemplified everything America said was beautiful in the late 1970s. Her long, straight, flaxen tresses would have made Farrah Fawcett jealous, and they hung from the top of her pretty head, down her petite 5’4” frame to her boyish derriere. She was always clad in the latest fashion, accessorized impeccably with slip-on Candies high-heels and Sassoon jeans. The scent of artificial strawberry-flavored, roll-on lip gloss and Charlie perfume trailed in her wake. She was taking modeling classes and her parents had hired expensive photographers to create her portfolio. Janet was naturally, the most popular girl in Junior High school.

I on the other hand, was like a great dane puppy at the peak of his growth spurt. By age 12, I had reached my full height of 5’10”. Having not yet filled out to womanly form, my overgrown feet protruded far more significantly than my flat chest from my lanky frame. My head was framed with unruly curls that conspired with the Miami humidity and stubbornly refused to submit to the rigorous tortures of blow-drying. Unlike Janet, I came from a poor family with a single mom, who struggled often unsuccessfully, to support three teenage daughters on a high school history teacher’s salary. Rather than Jordash and Sassoon, my jeans were a few worn-out hand-me-downs from my older, even taller sisters. Peace sign patches and some poorly rendered embroidery disguised their threadbare secrets. The rest of my fashion package was ahead of its time, coming in bulk from Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Rather than the popular crowd, I was relegated to the group of dorks and geeks. Books and weirdness were the hallmarks of our clan.

Given our disparate respective positions on the social ladder, I was surprised and amazed when Janet singled me out for her glowing attention in gym class. She always wanted to be on my team for volleyball, softball and especially basketball. We became friends. I didn’t know that her interest was based exclusively on the competitive advantage my overgrown reach afforded her.

I assumed that our blossoming friendship extended beyond the scope of a convenient sports relationship, and one day I boldly invited myself to a place at her popular kids’ lunch table. As I pulled out the plastic chair, the sound of metal legs scraping across linoleum yelled out in the suddenly hushed room. Tater tots stopped suspended in mid-air amid stares and whispers from across the lunch room. A natural order was crumbling. Janet shuffled in her seat and tried to ignore me. When I didn’t get the hint, she was forced to resort to dramatic gestures in order to preserve her reputation. “Kathleen, why do you think you can hang out with me outside of gym class? I am not your friend.” My humiliation was complete. Cheeks flushed, I bolted. Fork flying, faux meatloaf and gravy splattering, chair clattering, hobbled in shame and mortification, I stumbled back to my rightful place at the geek lunch table, where I stayed for the remainder of my school years.

Nevertheless, by the time I was in high school, my wardrobe had marginally improved. I had an after school job working the cash register at Miller Road Sundries, a drug store of sorts that specialized in selling bootlegged cigarettes by the carton, where I earned a few dollars, almost all of which went to buy books and clothes. It was there that I inadvertently fell into my first modeling job. An agent came into the store and offered me a part in a British beer commercial.

After graduating, I traveled to New York and then Paris, Milan and Munich. My lanky, awkward frame it seems was also a perfect coat hanger for haute couture. I bummed around Europe for a few years, taking advantage of the travel opportunities my accidental career afforded. Thailand, the Canary Islands, Sri Lanka, Latin America and even the Great Wall of China provided venues for showcasing fashion and accessories draped on my mannequin. The travel was amazing and was enough for a time to keep me from dwelling on my exclusive role in the world as phantom shell, stuffed, propped, painted and plasticized in two dimensions. But in the final analysis, having realized Janet’s American dream, I found myself yearning for the table of geeks. I returned to the United States, where I used the proceeds from my exploitation to finance my way through college.

As Photographed by Guy Bordin for French Vogue

I still travel. My work as a terrestrial ecologist takes me to exotic destinations across the neotropics. My colleagues and friends value my expertise and couldn't care less about the clothes I wear or the style of my hair. Few are even aware of my former occupation, and even if they are, it does not impress them. Like me, they are more interested in the latest taxonomic adjustments to the floral species in the Genus Borreria or the recent sighting of an unusual color phase of reddish egret. Being formerly one of the beautiful people is irrelevant to who I am.

Colleague Barbara and I Gathering Data on Grand Bahama

Revenge is best served by a life well lived, so the old adage goes, and if that’s true, then mine is sweet. But the saga of Janet leaves no victories for gloating satisfaction. She and countless young women like her buy into the marketing of American culture that tells women they have value only if they are young and beautiful. Complicit in their own objectification, they never discover that behind the glossy veneer is where their real value lies.