In my first blog post reviewing “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now,” I praised the fair, balanced view of the modeling industry that the documentary presented. My second “About Face” blog post features my 10 favorite quotes from these stunning women—most are inspiring, funny, innocuous. Now for “The Dark Side of Modeling” and the deeper questions about superficial beauty and aging.

Body Image

Carmen noted that when she started modeling and her image was splashed all over coveted covers, she was 5’9″ and weighed under 100 pounds.

Carmen Dell’Orefice

The photographers and fashion editors, even back in the 1940s, promoted the super-skinny look, which, 70 years later, has become the model norm. While my hunch is Carmen came by her teenage gamine look naturally, Carol Alt talks about starving herself to get thin enough for the Milan shows (then again, she claims to have been a size 16 when she was discovered!). China Machada says, “I never dieted. I never exercised.” I knew plenty of models like that: born with a model metabolism. More and more, girls who are not born naturally slender need to think about the extremes that may be required of them to fit in today’s sample sizes. See my blog on the model Crystal Renn’s book “Hungry.”

Especially as we age, the body ideal we see in magazines becomes less and less attainable. “The paparazzi everywhere looking for that one bit of cellulite— collectively it brings us down,” says Christie Brinkley.

Self-Esteem

Paulina Porizkova

Paulina started modeling at 15. She discussed a common problem with girls who start that young: “I was a typical 15-year-old girl as far as being completely insecure, and wanting to seem more grown up than she actually was by smoking and playing really hard and drinking too much. I arrived with girls who were 16, 17. I saw the ones who got into drugs, or became bulimic or anorexic. You see enough of that and you start to feel like it’s normal.” Later she adds, “Modeling doesn’t have anything to do with self-confidence. Working off your looks is pretty much the opposite. So maybe I became beautiful when I stopped modeling.”

Sexual Harassment

“What people called sexual harassment, we called compliments,” explains Paulina. “When a 16-year-old is flattered by a man pulling out his penis in front of her, that’s noteworthy.” (You’ll be relieved to hear nothing like that ever happened to me!)

Isabella Rossellini felt fortunate to have started when she was older (I concur). She says, “It’s harder when you are young. Once you are made up, people forget you are 15 or 16. They think you are a 20-year-old sex kitten.

Drugs

Lisa Taylor’s life, spiraling out of control

Lisa Taylor recounts a low point of her career: “On the cover of The Daily News, there was a story called “The Dark Side of Modeling,” with a picture of me. I knew that’s what my dad would see on his train ride home from work.  It was the 70s—everyone was doing drugs, mostly cocaine. I was so insecure, I needed to do it. It made me feel like I was worth being photographed, that I was somebody.” At the end of the film, Lisa (who has had a low-profile life since), stated: “I did get self-esteem from succeeding in something. I don’t regret anything. I’m just really glad I didn’t die in the process.”

Gia Carangi

Fashion editor Jade Hobson recalls seeing track marks on Gia’s arms during a shoot (Gia suffered a heroin addiction and died of AIDS in the 80s): “I feel somewhat responsible for using these girls when we knew of their heavy, heavy use of drugs. Maybe we exploited these girls, because it gave the photos a certain look.”

Plastic Surgery

Some have, some haven’t. “I did my eyes,” admits former Halston model Karen Bjornson, who revived her career at 50. “It was money well spent, getting the product in shape again. I don’t want to look younger, I just want to look well rested!”

Karen Bjornson

Octogenarian Carmen says her fountain of youth is silicone injections, administered by the same doctor over the years.

Carmen Dell’Orefice, modeling into her 80s

Bethanne Hardison’s secret is an exercise tip: “Planks in the morning!”

China Machada says, “I would never want to do plastic surgery. First of all, I’m a coward.” She quips, “Now that I’m being photographed at 81, I’m not that happy [about this decision]!”

Paulina says, “In your 20s, you are trying to attract a mate. At 50, you don’t need to attract the same thing, so why do you need to look like you are 20? I’m 45; I’m interested in attracting different things now. I have friends looking 20 years younger. It’s not that I don’t feel like I’m being left in the dust, but there’s nothing more attractive to me in a person than confidence and nothing says a lack of confidence like Botox. The only thing you have that is uniquely you is your expression. Change that, and your whole look goes. You may be more perfect, but you’re not you.”

Jerry Hall comments, “We have as role models, people who look scary to small children. They’re taking fat from their bottoms and putting it in their lips. That’s just gross!”

Aging

Isabella Rossellini theorizes: “It isn’t women who want to stay young, it’s the whole society… You keep thinking you’re going to be judged.” Lancome dumped her for a younger woman when she turned 40, claiming advertising is not about reality but about dreams. Ever wise, Isabella comments, “I don’t know if that’s true. I’m an old fox; I know which creams work, which products I want to buy. It’s easier to sell to young people, but targeting them perpetrates this idea that women to be beautiful have to be young.” She continues, “Growing old, nowadays you don’t count anymore. Before, you were a looked up to as a person of wisdom.” The star chuckles about not being invited to the A-List parties anymore. “Now my daughter is!” she adds. “My mom would say, the only way to have a long life is to grow old. She didn’t seem very affected by growing old. Maybe that’s why I’m not either.”

Isabella Rossellini

“I’m 50,” Jerry says, joyously. “That’s something to be celebrated!”

Carmen: “We all have to go sometime, and I want to go with my high heels on!”

Sign Up for Monthly Modeling Mentor Blog Highlights

I’m sure that was a self-esteem crusher, but what brilliant similes! I wonder if Carmen will let me steal those descriptions for a character in my next book?

Carmen Dell’Orefice

Re. professions available to women in the 1940s: nurse (highest level), teacher, actress (“dubious”). “Model didn’t exist as a profession; it was really model slash hooker.” —Carmen Dell’Orefice

We’ve come a long way, baby. Unless you include the models who use sex to get jobs, which doesn’t always work, so then they aren’t even getting paid for it.

“I don’t think there’s any 15-year-old girl who would turn down the chance to be called beautiful. You don’t realize that you are also going to be called ugly.” —Paulina Porizkova

Paulina Porizkova for Chanel in 1982

I can relate to the first part. I think that is especially the case for a lot of models who were gangly teens, taller than the guys in high school, and maybe quirky looking too. Re. being called “ugly”—anyone who called Paulina that, then or now, is blind! I was never called “ugly” as a model (at least not to my face) but certainly had a heightened awareness of my faults: the dark circles under my eyes, my fake-looking smile, my weak right profile (turns out most people have a superior left profile—I just read an article about that), varicose veins, cellulite, my bulbous rear. Certainly models are compared to each other constantly; every casting is a beauty contest. But I was always pretty psyched to even be in the contest. Which brings me to…

Carol Alt at a casting early in her career, being addressed by an editor who said, “Who cut your hair? Your eyebrows look like shit. You’re too big for our clothes.”

“I thought, I don’t care. I knew who I was.” Later in the documentary: “I always knew who I was: a fireman’s daughter from Long Island.” —Carol Alt

Carol Alt

Critiques generally rolled off me too. It’s not like they were criticizing my writing–now that stings. But my face? That’s all DNA. I didn’t have anything to do with it.

“I would see my modeling pictures and think, ‘She looks good.’ It was never really me.” —Paulina Porizkova

Totally. In the photos was this product created by great (or not so great, depending) lighting, hair, and makeup. I could look at those photos objectively, pick them apart or compliment them, without any egotistical or self-deprecating intentions. It was just business. Even now, with old modeling photos posted on my site, I’m thinking, Look, this is the magic the industry can create (especially evident when you compare cheesy early pics to striking later ones; it’s not a different model making the difference—it’s a better team). Those photos are as much about the people working on the shoots and the experiences (to illustrate shoots I talk about in my book) as my progression as a model. I don’t mean to say, “Hey, look at me. Wasn’t I hot?” But I do agree with Paulina when she talks about how looking back, a decade or two later, you look a lot better than you thought you did at the time!

“I’m going to leave this country and not come back until Vogue puts a black girl on the cover.” —Pat Cleveland

Pat Cleveland

In 1974, they did: Beverly Johnson. Runways are still whiter than they should be, but looking at who’s in the White House, things have improved considerably.

“I was supposedly living this glamorous life, but I was crippled by the idea of growing old and where do I go next? The whole age thing—in our industry, it’s everything.” —Beverly Johnson 

Beverly Johnson, Vogue 1974

This is true. At some agencies, aspiring models are turned away from open calls if they are over 18. I certainly felt ancient heading to Europe to start a modeling career at 22. I didn’t expect a “career”; I expected a few months of work at best and then I’d go to grad school or get a real job.

“For many years I thought I’ll do maybe two more months of this and then I’ll go back to my real life. It’s a fun job.” —Christie Brinkley 

Christie Brinkley in 1980

Exactly. Models complain about the constant travel, modeling wool in summer and bikinis in the winter, shoes that mangle toes, poses that mangle the body, and crack-of-dawn call-times, but the truth is: It’s a fun job. Plenty of models—even those scraping by and subsisting on Top Ramen—have gotten addicted to the lifestyle. What I and the women in this documentary prove is that a modeling career can have longevity. My income went up as I approached 30, not down. And look at Isabella Rossellini, who started at 28 and graced 28 Vogue covers!

“I would dream about modeling. I’d hear Halston’s voice calling me to go out on the runway. Those were the good dreams, the dreams where you are flying.” —Karen Bjornson (who made a modeling comeback at age 50)

Karen Bjornson

I have modeling dreams but they are more along the lines of being late for castings or panicking because I’m still with my male model boyfriend but swear I’ve met the man I’m supposed to marry and he’s not a male model!

“With these models, it wasn’t just about their physical beauty. They had character. They had personality. They had something else going on inside.” —Calvin Klein

Next week, a look at what else some had going on inside—insecurity, drug addictions—and what some have going on outside now: plastic surgery.

Plus, as promised, the answer to the captivating question of how much $ my kid netted on her Toys-R-Us booking…

REMEMBER TO COMMENT ON WHICH QUOTE IS YOUR FAVORITE AND WHY?

Subscribe to Modelingmentor.com/blog in a Reader

The Icons of “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now”

I got in on the conversation in a Q & A with Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on HBO.com

Watch the “About Face” Trailer Here:

I have so much to write about this documentary, that I’ll be doing a series of posts. Stay tuned for more from: Paulina Porizkova, Carmen Dell ‘Orefice, Isabella Rossellini, Jerry Hall, Marisa Berenson, Christy Turlington, Carol Alt, Kim Alexis, Beverly Johnson, Bethann Hardison, Pat Cleveland, China Machado, Christy Brinkley, Lisa Taylor, Cheryl Tiegs, Karen Bjornson, Calvin Klein, and Jade Hobson.

Sign Up for Monthly Modeling Mentor Blog Highlights