“Chicks Love Rejection” with Chicks & Giggles
(image: carolita johnson)
Today I’ll be organizing my bit for the “Chicks & Giggles” special edition of The Rejection Show tomorrow night. I’ll be telling the story of my failed attempt to validate my looks twenty years ago by becoming a model. Beforementioned “looks” having been under siege in both the public sector (I was “Ape-Face Johnson during junior high through high school) and the private sector (my mother offered to pay for lip reduction surgery).
(By the way, Johnny, Henry, Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t tell Mom.)
The drawings you see here are samples of what I’ll be using to illustrate my story of how Ape-Face became a successful, albeit ugly, model in Paris. Yes, I was once asked if I was with the “Ugly People Agency” by a photographer who spotted me on a tram in Milan.
Did my attempt to validate my looks work? Well, I had moderate success and my five minutes of fame as a very prestigious Jean-Paul Gaultier model. Since Jean-Paul used me in his shows, everybody else felt obliged to use me too, whether they liked it (or my mug, or the fact that I was too short at 5 foot 
or not. But I just happened to be handy at a moment when “not pretty” was the new pretty. So my plan backfired inasmuch as I became a well-known model, but a short, ugly, very badly paid well-known model.
Today you may think I’m not that hard to look at, but that’s because ground has been broken for the “not pretty” since the days when “not pretty” was really not considered pretty. Now, thank goodness, pretty has been democratized, maybe brought down to the lowest common denominator. And that’s not a bad thing because it means that today there’s all kinds of pretty.
I still model, but I only do fittings now, as a “contemporary size 6.” The picture above is what my self-image reverts to during a bad swimwear fitting. Photos taken during fittings are photos of disasters. They’re never flattering. Clients who don’t spec their garments before a fitting often irrationally wonder if it’s me who’s gained weight since the day before. I often, also irrationally, go home thinking I really do look as bad as I looked in the off-spec clothing I’ve just fitted for an hour or three, or eight.
I’ll be posting my entire segment from “Chicks & Giggles” Rejection Show online tomorrow, for those of you who couldn’t make it in person!
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:45 am
So you were kategorised as “ugly” just because you didn’t look like Barbie?
Kate Moss has about the same height as you (and me – as I’m 1,71m) and for her it didn’t seem to have been much of a problem. And I don’t find her particularly beautiful, really.
To me it seems (and some photographers I know have agreed on that) that your main problem as a model was that you have brains. And “you are ugly” to me as a total outsider basically appears to be the stereotype answer you give to a model when you don’t want it or what you want to keep her self conscience down. Just think of what happened to me in academia here and there.
Plus: I really often heard that models were made fun of by their peers before they became successful. They were different – too thin, too tall, too whatever, they didn’t fit in so they were bullied against.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:23 am
Ah, yes, you’re totally right. But the irony of my success as a model was that I was picked up as part of a new trend in which “not pretty” was the new “pretty.” There was even an agency created at the time called, “Ugly People.” So even as a model, editors and photographers were not shooting me as if I were beautiful, but as if I were some kind of quirky, interesting oddity. That was what I didn’t realize at first, and when I did, I was supremely insulted!
I took it personally, but it’s true that this movement, in the late 80’s made it easier for a lot of “not pretty” girls to also finally be appreciated. Now everyone’s pretty! And is that a bad thing? I think I, and others from my model generation, saved quite a few girls from going through what we went through! So it was worth it!