The Naked Truth About Modeling

A 16-year-old girl is on her first modeling shoot in Paris. She is unchaperoned and inexperienced. She takes a break for a cup of coffee, and a photographer follows her down the hall. She stops, and he fiddles with her clothes. Then he reaches in between her legs and gropes her. Stunned, the model says nothing. He says nothing. They walk back into the room and finish the shoot. (Story continued below...)

It's stories like these that stood out as Sara Ziff, a successful runway model, and her boyfriend, filmmaker Ole Schell, began shooting behind the scenes at Ziff's shows. For five years, they recorded parties, castings, inside hotel rooms, and backstage behind the runway as Ziff became the face of campaigns from Calvin Klein to Dolce & Gabbana. What emerged was a portrait of the dark side of the modeling world, one that most people never see: young girls, often half a world away from home, unprepared to handle the sexual objectification and frequent harassment that Ziff says is an all-too-common part of their jobs. Ziff and Schell turned their footage into a documentary, Picture Me, which won the audience award for best picture at the Milan Film Festival last month. Ziff spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett. Excerpts:

Bennett: Were you worried how the industry would react to your film?
Ziff: After the premiere, I figured I might never work again. But if anything, I think [the film] has actually helped my career. A week after the premiere, a casting director who was there booked me for a Gap ad. I've gotten e-mails from well-known designers and casting directors and tons of other models, saying, "I'm so glad this is finally coming out, because so many people have these stories." And it's really not that secret. People know these things happen, but they tend to turn a blind eye. And if you don't talk about it, you think you're the only one.

Were you ever put in that kind of position?
I started modeling at 14, after being scouted on the street walking home from school. One of my first castings was in a photographer's apartment downtown. I got there, and there was a line of models waiting at the door. I went in and he asked me to show him my book. I did, and then he said, "Well, this is a bathing-suit story, and it's a little hard for me to picture you in a bathing suit. Could you take your shirt off?" And I thought, "Well, that makes sense," so I did. And then he said, "Can you take your pants off?" And this continued to the point where I'm standing there [topless,] basically totally naked. I was 14. And in hindsight, it's crazy that I was put in that position, but I just didn't know any better.

Did you tell your parents?
No, absolutely not. It was something I had never talked about until recently, even with the people closest to me. For the most part, people on these shoots are completely professional, so no girl who has one or two bad experiences—which she's bound to have—is going to call home and say, "Mom, Dad, I just got molested." Because she knows she's going to be on the next bus back to Kansas.

So how did you cope?
It's raised a lot of issues I've probably tried not to address, but I'm 27 now, and I've had enough time to think about these things. But at the time it happens, it's a little bit like an aftershock. You think, "My God, how did that happen? Why did that have to happen and why are there no measures to protect these young girls?"

And does the industry just turn a blind eye?
The agents are supposed to act as surrogate parents for these girls, but oftentimes, what's in the agency's best interest is not in the best interest of the girl. The average age of a model [starting out] is something like 14. So you've got really young girls being put in these potentially compromising situations in a totally unregulated industry. A lot of the time they're underage and working with predatory men. But the problem is the models are disposable, so they're not in a position to complain.

Were any of the women you speak to in the film hesitant to go on camera?
Absolutely. The [16-year-old model] who shared [her] story about being sexually assaulted on a photo shoot called me the day before the premiere and asked us to take her story out [which we did]. She had never told anyone before she confessed this on camera, and she wasn't ready for the world to see it.

What do you think about the media focus on the extreme thinness of models? Are there bigger issues in the industry?
You can't talk about body image without talking about the extreme youth of models. Fourteen- and 15-year-old girls can be thin in a way that's impossible for a 30-year-old; they are young and gangly, and that's natural. What's not natural is for a full-grown woman to aspire to that.

In the film you talk about struggling to reconcile art with exploitation. Can you describe that?
Fashion is this kind of perfect blend of art and commerce, and I think when you're the model … for me anyway, I'd think, "Well, what's the difference between posing in my underwear for a Calvin Klein ad—which I've done—and being a stripper?" And I think what can be confusing is thinking, "Am I some sort of commodified body? Am I prostituting myself? Or am I part of some artistic creative collaborative project?" And I think when you're working as a model, especially in the higher end of the business, you're sort of straddling those two.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to go into this industry?
No, especially not as it is now.