Mature Modeling Story from Canada

Just wanted to share this heartfelt story from a mature model with a disadvantage in the modeling industry. Please read and feel free to offer your comments or helpful suggestions to Sheryl and to other models who are facing this situation – Bob

Bob:
My name is Sheryl and I’m writing to you today from the City of Penticton, located in the beautiful Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada.  The topography here is very much like Southern California – oh yes, beautiful lakes, wineries galore and a variety of life for sure with the greatest weather in Canada!

I have been involved in the Modelling Industry on and off since I was a teenager.  I did not make it anywhere in the industry when I was younger for 3 reasons.  (1) An overly religious mother who would not allow me to work from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset and was very overbearing (2) Continuous experiences with showing up for a shoot and the photographer just wanted sex on the set right now or I don’t take your picture and so I’d walk (3) Growing afraid because of experiences with top hairstylists like the older gentleman who has that hairstyle competition show on tv now, whom, when I was 14, took my beautiful naturally curly, thick, long to past my derriere hair and simply cut it off just below my ears, parted in the middle with a slight angle to the hair edge which did not suit my facial shape at all.  When I quite naturally cried to see what he’d done, he simply yelled and screamed that he was the great so and so hairdresser and I was to evacuate his shop now, now now!
When I was 15 I assisted a former Miss Canada in Edmonton, partner to the well known Mel Hurtig (Publisher/Writer) to run her modeling school.

My next biggest experience was when I moved to the USA, to Southern California and I attended the Baribizon School of Modelling & Makeup Artistry.  I took their course and graduated with honors.  Immediately at the end of my course was a Pre-Miss California Pageant, which I entered and won 1st Runner Up and I still have my trophy today;  that Pageant Creator was an industry rat – he put on this pagent and other than the actual trophies which all true winners did get – he didn’t have any of the other prizes etc. advertised and got into some trouble.  The Winner though, did actually go to the Miss California Pageant that year and I can’t remember how she did as I returned to Canada some months after.

Every experience one learns from.  I used what I learned to always keep my own self looking well, but not over done.  I really feel that because of what I learned about dressing classically styled etc. has helped me in many other areas of life other than just job.  I have classically styled outfits which are 15-20 years old and when I wear them today into top shops in my Region, the Store Clerks always freak out and ask me where I got my outfit.  Talk about being able to wear a ‘I have something you don’t know’ smile on my face as I say, ‘at my special shop’ and just walk away.

I have been receiving your modelling ezine for a year now and I love all of the really great and truthful advice that you are giving within it.  Today’s ezine on the top 10 most important things for approaching an agency to obtain a contract was what motivated me to write to you, for I wish to tell you my most recent experience, which also proves something very interesting about life, others thoughts and the modeling industry.

I am now just about 47 (will turn in August).  I am 5′ 8′ and I don’t want to say my weight in poundage, let’s just say that I’m a Plus Sized Woman who because of the way I put myself together, I look like a lot of the ladies from Sex N’ The City – like the Cantrell actress for example.  I know how to put myself together to hide the areas I don’t want others to ‘notice’.
My hair I admit I color, but it’s not extreme, I just color it pretty close to what my natural color was most of my life, I’m a Medium Ash Blonde and my hair is naturally curly and all one length, except for wavy varigated bangs I have in the front.  This way I can easily wash my hair, blow dry the bangs and I’m gone, or I can do many very interesting styles, except the weight of it, actually sometimes keeps me from certain up-dos.

I am also a disAbled woman.  Wooops!  stop the reading, what was that word?  disAbled?  Yes.  I have an invisible disability which is called Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue, along with Butterfly Lupus and Osteoarthritis in my left knee.  Thus, many times outside of the home, I have to walk with the assistance of a cane or a walker.  I spell the word disAbled the way I do, because I learned that from a past organization in my life and it helped me to be able to focus on my abilities rather than on the whatever it is that is trying to attack me and keep me from doing what I want or need to do.

I had one of the greatest happenings for me fall apart because of lack of government vision.  Last Fall I was in a very unique course for adults with disAbilities in my area called ‘Footprints to Technology’.  This was a course started by a man who had become wheelchair bound in Vancouver, BC. and he put together the Neil Squire Society, based on teaching persons with disAbilities computer skills so that they can keep up with the world and move forward in a great positive way.  As I read the paper one day I saw an ad about a  Model & Talent Agency from a city in another Province next to mine, coming to Kelowna, BC (that’s one hour north of me) looking for Models for a variety of assignments.  I ignored this ad at first on purpose, based on an experience I’d had back in 2002 when I answered a similar ad, which resulted in me going literally door-knocking to businesses in town to raise money for the costs to return to my birth/raising City of Edmonton for an event where there was to be X number of Agencies to do with more than Modelling.  Because I am a multi-talented woman, that event I attended in 2002 was exciting and got me filled with hope to experience my dreams I’ve had in this area since I was very young.

Getting back to this last fall, I came to class one day to find this ad I had ignored, cut out – highlighted on my desk.  I approached my instructor who simply encouraged me.  I used my last money and drove to Kelowna on a day when we all of a sudden had a winter type of storm normal to Edmonton and Eastern Canada, but not to here, which I could handle fairly well because of prior weather driving experience and training.  I arrived and I gathered up my self-esteem and went to my modeling interview.  As I came off of the elevator a gentleman in a very modern black suit approached me and took my coat and sat me down to fill out an information form.  Whilst I was doing that, it became comical to me because much younger gals who were showing up to be interviewed and couldn’t understand certain areas of the form, were coming to me, because they told me they thought that I was the modeling school administrator!  Yes, true!  I’m not surprised, based on my classic style of dressing as I explained earlier.  Suddenly, the same man whom had taken my coat appeared before me and asked me into the interview room. 

As I sat down to be interviewed, I paid close attention to every little detail of what he had on that desk, how he was dressed, his body language etc.  When the appropriate moment came, I handed the gentleman my Artist Portfolio.  Now, let me explain.  My Artist Portfolio I made myself, after having done much research years before when I was managing and booking music artists up and down the Okanagan Valley and researched what my clients needed to succeed.  I was so wishing that I had at least a 3 page website, but knew I had to give the best of what I had.  He was very impressed with my Artist Portfolio, however, explained that it wouldn’t matter to them how good my pictures were (of which I only had 4 specific ones) their agency wanted all of the women they chose to have new pictures done in their particular way.  Knowing the description the agency administrator had told me of this gentleman interviewing me, I trusted and understood what he was saying.

This was now the embarassing moment.  I entered with my cane, he could see that I had to use it for something, but I also showed him how if I only had to walk this type of distance for this X amount of time, I knew by experience with my body what I could handle.  This gentleman freaked out over me.  He stated that he very much wanted me for Plus Sized Modeling and stated that I had a unique beauty which put me in a completely different category than the much younger women who were showing up in droves for these interviews. I was told that no, I had not signed anything, but as far as he was concerned he was like me, that his handshake was his contract and I was to be proud for I was chosen as one of only 30 women out of over 150 interviewed that day.

I was then told that I needed to return in 2 weeks with $820 which would pay for their particular hair/makeup gal, photographer (which they would be flying to Kelowna from their Offices) and that New Marketing Photo Sheets with of course on the bottom of them the Model & Talent Company’s Name and contact info with my specs etc. would be printed on and they would keep X amount of Marketing Sheets and give me X amount.  That is a very fair offer, for I can tell you that I have been in the past quoted prices all the way up to $15,000 dollars for the same thing.

I took a breath and I immediately on the spot in a business-like manner explained to him what my circumstances are.
I am a mature woman who survives (barely) on Provincial Disability and I do not have a Credit Card, nor do I have extra amounts of money around to pay for something like this.  I then explained about the course I was in and that surely because the point of the course is to assist adults with disAbilities to take on jobs, or be entrepreneur etc. there would be a ‘pot of money’ for areas like this.

Well, well, I drove back more excited than I’d been in quite some time believing with everything in me that I was going to be applauded by my instructors and supported in my road.  I could not have been more wrong.  The initial was true, my instructors were very proud of me and all of my classmates were literally freaking out and making statements about how I was going to be the great model who taught Canada and the world about people with disAbilities and help to make all of our lives better.

My instructor sadly told me that there was no money in their Federal Govt. funding for such an item.  I couldn’t believe it and because of the type of person I am and my many years of computer internet experience I went crazy for two weeks hunting down and contacting both Federal and Provincial Canadian Ministers of Employment, Status of Women, Aboriginal (I’m Metis), Human Rights etc. etc.  The bottom line came to the fact that the Government had 3 years ago removed from it’s fundings for the disAbled any ‘tools’ money to attain work.  The current Provincial ruling is that only if the potential employer writes a letter stating that they are removing the individual from the government disability rolls for good, the government will go upwards of $200 for ‘tools’ to attain work.  When I got ahold of my local government office for this money even, I was told that even though it states that, I would not get one read cent because the government does not believe in modelling, they feel that it is the greatest area where women get abused and they don’t at all understand that it is the ‘artists’ responsibility to fund and create the Artist Portfolio’.

Thus, I was again, losing a dream and out of anything potential which would have happened in the Modeling (& Talent) area.

I think you can understand at this point the reason that I decided to write to you.  It has been most wonderful that industry changes have happened to accept Plus Sized Women, however, when to we see any women with disAbilities, whether those disAbilities are openly viewable or not?  We don’t.

The movies have made advances in that area, however, in direct modeling and pictures of women in magazines etc.  No.
There is little to now existence of that at all, unless there is a picture of a person in a direct disAbility Magazine.

I truly hope that my story will touch someone out there.  I, nor any disAbled woman, who really puts a good foot forward does not deserve to be suddenly dropped (on the head is what it feels like) as if we don’t count.
Namaste’

Sheryl

Tags: career in modeling, disabled model, mature model, modeling career