My Body(7)

Money meant freedom and control, and all I had to do to fund my independence was learn to become someone else a few times a week: strip down and get greased up in body oil to pose suggestively in red lace lingerie or brightly printed bikinis I’d never choose to wear, pouting at the command of some middle-aged male photographer.

Once I quit school—and got the flu—I reached a new level of financial success. Lingerie and swim shoots paid more than the normal day rate for a standard e-commerce job, and I had several clients who booked me regularly for what my body did for their products. I remember coming out of a dressing room in a lingerie set and one female client remarking that it was “hard to find girls that are so skinny and can also fill out a bra.” My cup size was a valuable and rare asset, one that translated directly to higher paying jobs. It also limited the type of work I could do, though; I was a “commercial swim” girl, meaning that I could shoot catalogs but I’d never work in high fashion.

The more money I made from modeling, the more I enjoyed having it. I had no rich friends, and for that reason I kept my indulgences private, driving alone to a clothing store where, only a year or so before, my high school girlfriends and I had never dared to buy anything, only occasionally stopping by to look. We’d leave quickly the moment a salesperson asked, “Can I help you girls with anything?” Now I luxuriated in going into the store alone, gripping my faux leather purse and touching the hanging garments with the tips of my fingers, feeling a thrill go up my spine as I responded, “Yes, thank you, I’d like to try this on.” Sometimes I’d buy an item of clothing and other times I’d leave empty-handed, elated by the experience either way. One night, after a solo shopping excursion, I wore a brand-new navy jacket to meet a friend. She asked me when I’d bought it.

“Today,” I told her. She shook her head.

“Damn,” she said. “So nice to just be able to walk into a store and pick something out whenever you feel like it, huh?” I studied her, relieved to see that she wasn’t resentful. I felt embarrassed by the new difference in our lives but also grateful she could appreciate my pleasure. She was right—it was so nice.

I found a cheap ground-floor loft to lease in Downtown Los Angeles and paid $1,250 a month in cash, dropping off a thick envelope with my landlord, who stank of patchouli oil and lived in the loft directly above me. The space was entirely concrete and had only one window, complete with metal bars, which looked out on a parking lot. The ceilings were so low that in the platforms I’d come to wear religiously I could reach up and place the palms of my hands flat against them. None of this bothered me, though; I was thrilled to have what I considered to be a spacious loft, many times bigger than any place I’d lived in previously. I painted the walls and ceiling white and pinned dollar-store Christmas lights around the headboard of my bed.

One of my favorite things to do after a day of work was to pick up some Thai food from a takeout place close to my building and sit on my bed, complete with the quilt I’d bought from Urban Outfitters for sixty bucks and the bed frame I’d borrowed from my parents’ house. Nights like these were what I lived for; I couldn’t imagine anything more luxurious or enjoyable.

I liked to explain to people that I paid only a dollar per square foot when they asked why I lived so far from Hollywood, the center of the modeling industry. I took pride in being in what was called the Arts District, a neighborhood that was considered funky and up-and-coming. It was quite a commute, at least a forty-five-minute drive to most of my shoots and castings. But I liked the distance the loft offered me from the world of photographers, agencies, and clients, and most of all I liked the identity my edgy neighborhood bestowed on me. On my drive home from work, I’d transform back from mannequin to myself.

Within a year, I was featured in a few editorials for a Los Angeles–based magazine that got the attention of several blogs and fashion and men’s sites, leading my agent to suggest a trip to New York to meet with agencies on the East Coast as well as Sports Illustrated and Victoria’s Secret.

“But aren’t I too short for New York?” I asked.

The same agent had told me only a year or so before that the fashion world was not an option for me. “There’s just no point in you trying to be something you aren’t,” she’d said simply.

“Not necessarily,” she told me now, avoiding my eyes. As the number on my scale went down, the number on my checks had been going up. The agency had taken notice.

I stayed in a tiny hotel room in Midtown with rough beige carpeting and a small instant-coffee maker that I used each morning before my castings. There was no proper full-sized mirror in the room, so I climbed onto the bed in my heels to check my outfit before grabbing my portfolio and heading out. Despite the expense, I took taxis to castings, reading the addresses from my email, not confident enough to navigate New York City’s subway system. Still, I was mindful of how much money I was spending, knowing that the cost of the flights and hotel would be deducted from my next paycheck.

I felt tiny as I entered the grand lobby of the Victoria’s Secret building. A man in a crisp suit and tie greeted me from behind a long silver desk.

“Casting?” he asked, his eyes heavy and his expression blank. I nodded, encouraged that he had identified me as a model. Maybe I do belong here, I thought.

Upstairs, I waited alone below a silver Victoria’s Secret sign, surrounded by giant blown-up black-and-white images of recognizable models—or, as Victoria’s Secret referred to them, “angels”—arching their backs and holding index fingers up to their mouths as if flirtatiously telling me to shush. A floor-to-ceiling screen displayed a parade of long-legged women strutting down a runway, wearing sparkling lingerie and large, colorful wings. They came toward me, one after another, their hair bouncing as they smiled wide, their eyes looking just beyond mine. They were the goddesses of this large, modern office building and these screens were their shrines. They were mannequins, too, I knew, but they seemed to feel powerful in a way I never did. I wanted to be one of them. I sat mesmerized until a woman came out from behind two double doors and greeted me, pulling my attention away.