[HERE FOR EASY SEARCH - this script version is not final] Sara Ziff If you are. A young sexually attractive woman who gets perhaps unwanted attention you know that appearance matters. If you are black in America you know that image matters Jillian Mercado I didn’t see anyone who had a visible disability in the mainstream media Diandra [00:08:39] there are about two spots in this. And now there are about two spots in a show for. Black girls out of maybe 50. Renee Peters as I’m getting older I’m really noticing how the rest of society must feel from looking at these images of young women and seeing young really young women 14 year olds 15 year olds as the ideal of beauty [00:13:16] Precious Lee the conventional ideal of beauty is it has been a thin white woman. Julia Geier they would talk about my body in front of me. [00:31:17] Like they’d say like you know Julia’s very wide and her hips are very big. Everyone keep that in mind. Paloma Elsesser My image is my activism ————- DIVERSITY: Ebonee Davis 00:02:52]. A lot of the agencies that I went to either told me they had someone who looked like me or there wasn’t room on their board for me or they just didn’t get my look. Diandra Forrest I have albinism so my look is completely different. A lot of the times design is inclines I don’t really know where to put their legacy. Why is she black and what’s going on. [00:15:30] But I have encountered like especially in Europe people were like oh have you got your lips line or oh you know the bleachers scan or just like crazy questions Julia generally fit models. [01:00:28] From what I’ve seen in my career in the last nine years are most of the time you look like me are pretty close to what I look like. ….even in companies that preach like oh we’re a diverse company and they advertise diversity and they celebrate diversity in their campaigns and things like that on the inside of like their actual headquarters or wherever they’re doing their production fittings. There’s. There’s. [01:01:03] Almost no diversity Ebonee [00:04:52] There are things that I did to compromise my authenticity in order to get my foot in the door such as straightening my hair and changing what I wore. I was told I shouldn’t wear certain jewelry. I was told I shouldn’t wear certain clothes I was told the model has to wear all black and high heels to every casting and every event. Shivani Persad [~14:00]I’ve seen that they’ll say for example if you put a nonwhite model on the cover of a magazine statistically they found that it sells less or like things like that. [ ….] Jillian [00:08:05] Just by me living the way I live even you know walking around in the street those same like facial expressions that I get from just taking the subway every morning at a photo shoot. It’s no different. It’s the same facial expressions. Grace just in regular life like say Hello my name is Grace and they’d be like hey girl what’s up. And I’m like. I haven’t. Said anything for you to assume that I’ve talk like that. Precious my first agent here changed my name from precious to Victoria. And so I had to. Remember at castings that my name was Victoria not precious. I would write my name down on the paper. You know Precious and scratched it out of my. And then write it as Victoria and like literally will be sitting there and don’t even know the calling my name because there was just so I was so attached to it. Jillian: not a lot of clothes out there are adoptable to people that. You know just have different body types. I know that there is like a petite category and a Kirby a plus size category but there isn’t any at all a category for people with disabilities who may have like one arm or one leg or you know different curves in their bodies that may not fit a normal regular T-shirt as well as a want want it to fit. And I think that’s a very it’s a huge concern for me because not only do I live in this world but also. [00:34:58] It’s a very it’s a huge community of people like millions of people who have disabilities and yet nobody is stepping up to make this concern as big as it should be. Paloma the average size woman in America is a size 14. So to have designers to completely you know remove. [00:27:50] That from their collections or people like publications not you know booking models that are of color or a different size. It just is. Is happening slowly but I think that it could happen at a faster pace. Precious: what I think needs to change in the. [00:26:54] Fashion modeling industry as a whole is we need more people that have more power and influence to open their mind to different types of beauty . OBJECTIFICATION Ebonee [00:19:58] When I decided to wear my hair natural at first my agency was totally against it. They told me that just rolled out of bed look isn’t going to work. And it wasn’t just rolled out of bed. It takes a lot of work. They told me I was going to lose the clients that I had and that new clients wouldn’t want to work with me. But the crazy thing is that a month less than a month after the decision to wear my hair natural I booked the biggest campaign of my life and that was the calvin Klein campaign Renee [00:15:54] I grew up in the era where size zero was the norm. That was the ideal. And I was not a size zero. Naturally I’m a size 4. Which is still very small. …..And I actually developed an eating disorder. I suffered from anorexia and bulimia. And unfortunately that lasted. Five or six years of my career. And it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized that I had a problem Julia A lot of people were asking me to lose weight all the time. I mean it was just it’s been a constant throughout my whole career. [00:15:49] Kelly [00:16:59] I Retired from the industry two years ago. I had been modeling for six almost seven years. ….I think I had this moment when I was like. 20 or 21 years old and I was like I understand why Britney. [00:17:43] Britney Spears had a meltdown and shaved her head and it’s like you get sick of people touching you. And I wanted to feel a little bit more in control of my life Ebonee It could be you know I’m thirsty and I am not allowed to or I’m just I just can’t take a break in that moment to get water which is I guess depriving me of a human necessity. Which then is objectify me or there have been extreme cases more extreme where it’s like oh. Let me help you put lotion on your back. But I don’t need help with that because I don’t need you touching me.[00:37:02] Renee I had one guy. Who wanted my my nipples to look hard for the shoot to show through. He literally just grabbed my nipple and was like See we need it to be hard. And I didn’t know this guy and he wasn’t a friend. It wasn’t like he wasn’t even gay he was actually straight. And. I was still you know 21 at this point in my career and I thought that was normal because I was just starting and I didn’t speak up. [00:11:53] Shivani [00:10:42] sometimes I feel like I need to work harder because if I fall off of my diet or my training schedule just a little bit it affects me more a lot more and I think that’s because of genetics and also because of my age. Julia some. Of my worst experiences in my career. Have been when I was made to feel like. Very disposable and replaceable because. [00:29:15] I am honestly I mean that’s how the industry works. AGE Renee [00:13:16] I was out of casting yesterday that felt like a cattle call. And I was looking around and I felt like everyone must have been 16 17 18 and here am I like past 25 and thinking like I’m washed up I’m no good anymore more like all these girls. They’re the ones that are taking my jobs. Not only that like really questioning am I still beautiful. Do I still hold worth. What do I have to offer Ebonee the dangers of putting bringing a girl and putting her in this industry at such a young age go beyond just being in front of the camera. And I think that’s what agents brokers and other people have to understand is the environments that you’re putting these girls and is putting them at risk. [00:32:02] Grace One of my first test shoots in New York we drove out to the Hamptons and the photographer. [00:28:30] Nobody told me that it was going to be topless. So I shot topless on the beach in the poses he was asking me to do and I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life. Sara we found that child models uniquely among child performers didn’t have any labor protections. They were not governed by the Department of Labor. They were not considered performers like actors and singers and dancers under the law. So we reclassified child models as child performers and thereby extended them the same protections like trust accounts or provisions for having a chaperone on set for kids who were under 16 years old. [00:10:00] Kelly Mittendorf [00:52:16] I was a 16 year old. I was at Disneyland on a camp trip and I had to rush to New York to shoot an editorial. I was wearing my camp T-shirt and athletic shorts and sneakers and showed up on set and it was. S&M inspired. [00:53:54] But isn’t it funny how I tell the story and I inherently defend it. I say it’s cute and it’s quirky. And there’s a part of me that still can’t say it’s not OK to have a 16 year old supporting S&M Stella Duval I saw girls doing lingerie at 14. And. You know they’re their parents are are Hoft to be on. But it’s like they did not want to do that. And they felt very uncomfortable. [00:42:30] I actually when I was young I shot was someone who went to jail for pedophilia. Sara [00:12:53] I think there are a few different answers that see when people people often ask me why the fashion industry seems to have this obsession with extreme youth. And. Some people would say that. [00:13:10] People in the industry have confused being new and having a moment with age. Other people would say that adolescent girls have a sort of a pre-pubescent physique that is favored by designers. They don’t have those sort of womanly curves. And and there are a lot of. You know speculative reasons for why why that might be the sort of idealized body type. IMAGE - WOMAN EMPOWERMENT Sara I think that too often models are trivialized and our concerns are dismissed because. [00:15:06] We’re young women.[00:15:09] ….. mean there’s no way that you could say that the systemic problems in our industry. I think people would not have been able to turn a blind eye if this were a male dominated.[00:15:27] Industry. Julia [00:34:30] so very often it’s rare that a model will speak out against her agency or against the client and stand up for herself because of the intimidation and because of the fact that she is replaceable easily. Sara It’s very difficult. To challenge. To you know bite the hand that feeds you [29] Paloma [00:20:14] I do think it’s changing for the better because they do believe that in order we must like we have to tokenize in order to normalize. But I also. Think. That. I don’t want this shift to be. Commodified as is it a trend. I want it to be a reality. SHivani [00:31:42] So know the two sides of it is really like an inner struggle every single day. It’s hard to be somebody who you know wants to promote diversity and you know loving yourself the way you are and things like that when I’m also the face of like a lot of make up brands. Julia [00:23:24] You know companies have to do marketing it’s essential for business. But. I think that. Playing on women’s insecurities has become so extremely pervasive in our society and it’s so damaging and so unhealthy. Ebonee [18.30] believe that everything starts with self-love and that’s what the decision to wear my hair natural really taught me because ultimately it was. Me not loving myself even though I was told to be ashamed of my hair. It was the decision on my behalf to not love myself. That made me straighten my hair and that’s what I had to realize for so many things in my life is just the lack of self-love. Diandra Once you really are secure yourself no one can really break you. [~21] Jillian [~29] in my school I was one of the only one of like 300 students in my high school who had a visible disability. Everybody else as that’s called normal. They were normal and it wasn’t. And it took a toll on my on who I am. And it took a toll on me growing up into the individual that I am today. But there was a moment in time where I was just really tired of being tired and sick of being sad all the time and and not moving anywhere. I think that once you have a very positive. View on things your life becomes way smoother and things move exactly the way you want to move it towards. Precious when I book a job that has you know when I book a commercial or anything that I do I take pride in the fact that I am you know working with a brand that is that makes it. [00:22:22] A priority to show that models and women can be represented in different sizes and different colors. Grace [00:14:06] Especially today. Any one that shows their personality or what they’re doing really is a bonus in this industry because fashion has been around for a long time. And. Our ideas. Havent … [00:18:44]in the entertainment industry we do kind of have a responsibility to represent at least what your values are or where you stand because so many eyes are on you and so many young eyes are on you and it really you really shape a lot of people’s perspectives. Precious models can’t do it on their own models can book themselves for a campaign. People aren;t seeing. These different types of beauty because the publications the designers the people that are actually in the power to make it happen aren’t had like making it happen. Julia [00:25:24]. I think that women they forget that they have. Consumer Power and if they stop buying into the women’s magazines that are always like lose 15 pounds in two weeks and oh here’s how you completely change your body and here’s how you lose two inches off your thighs ……. [00:26:26] I would tell women too if they don’t like what if they don’t like how something is making them feel don’t give it money. Jillian And in my mind I am competing with like the Naomi Campbell’s and the Kate Moss is of the world. Just because. Why not. END