What If We Treated Fashion Models Like People Instead Of Laughing When They’re Abused?

If we learned anything from 24 cycles of “America’s Next Top Model,” other than how to smize and the fact that Tyra Banks is an actual monster, it is that modeling is not really all that glamorous. One thing I can say for the show is that it was pretty clear about the fact that the girls (and, in cycles 21 and 22, guys) were signing up for a job with fairly low pay and miserable working conditions — often involving living in crowded apartments with a whole bunch of other models. Also sometimes getting hypothermia or being forced to pose in a grave right after finding out your good friend died or or posing with a tarantula on your face or having a gap drilled into your teeth or being told to have full-on dental surgery to close a gap you don’t want closed or being screamed at by Janice Dickinson. When you really think about it, the gist of that show really was “We’re going to torture you the whole time and really drill into you that you don’t have any agency when it comes to what happens to you, because that’s what this job is!”

But it shouldn’t be — and that’s why it’s great news to hear that, for the third year in a row, the New York State Senate Labor Committee has passed the Fashion Workers Act.

The bill, sponsored by Brad Hoylman-Sigal in the state Senate and Karines Reyes in the state Assembly, would provide models, content creators, and others working in the fashion industry with basic labor protections like overtime, protection from harassment, discrimination and abuse, and not sending them into debt by charging them a ton of inexplicable “fees.”

Unlike many other workers in the entertainment industry, models and other fashion workers have zero labor protections, and model management companies have no licensing requirements or regulations. This is despite the fact that it is a $2.5 trillion global industry that, in New York alone, “employs 180,000 people, accounting for 6% of the city’s workforce and generating $10.9 billion in total wages.”

According to Model Alliance, the group advocating for this legislation:

Unlike talent agencies, modeling and creative agencies are considered to be management companies under New York State General Business Law §171(8), known as the “incidental booking exception,” allowing them to escape licensing and regulation. In almost every case, agencies are granted blanket “power of attorney” as part of their agreement to represent talent, giving agencies power to accept payments on behalf of the model, deposit checks and deduct expenses, as well as book jobs, negotiate the model’s rate of pay, and give third parties permission to use the model’s image, while having no obligation to act in their talents’ best interests.

That would be unacceptable in pretty much any industry — but the modeling industry relies on the fact that modeling is an “aspirational” job that a whole lot of people desperately want and very few get to do, along with the fact that it is a workforce made up primarily of young people with big dreams and little work experience, many of whom are new immigrants who don’t even speak English yet.

I’m sure it also benefits from the fact that a lot of people who would normally care about serious labor violations instead start complaining that people who are interested in fashion are stupid and shallow and “well maybe that will teach people not to be models” — a thing I am still furious about hearing someone say when all the shit about Terry Richardson came out. (Coincidentally — Richardson is currently facing two more lawsuits made possible by New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act, which the Model Alliance helped create and pass two years ago. Yes, the same one that allowed E. Jean Carroll to sue Donald Trump for something besides his big mouth.)

But regardless of what industry anyone is in or how “aspirational” their job is, this is unacceptable.

For example, models often don’t know whether and how much they’ll be paid for jobs booked through management companies, which deduct various unexplained fees from their earnings, in addition to a 20 percent commission both on the model’s fee and the client’s payment. Models are also often left in the dark about how their images will be used, which is particularly concerning in light of the rise of generative artificial intelligence. Model management companies crowd young models in model apartments, where they warehouse anywhere from six to 10 young women in one apartment and charge them each upwards of $2,000 a month for an apartment worth far less. Models are held to multi-year, auto-renewing contracts without any guarantee of actually being booked paid work, which ensnares them in cycles of debt and makes models highly vulnerable to other forms of abuse, including human trafficking. When models experience abuse, they do not have a safe channel to file work-related grievances without a risk of retaliation.

This legislation, which seems like it should really be a no-brainer to pass, would change all of that, as well as ensure that they have basic workplace protections.

More Perfect Union produced this video about the legislation when it passed the Labor Committee last year, in which fashion models talk about some of the ways they have been exploited by the industry. Honestly, it’s even more messed up than I thought, and I already knew it was messed up.

Earlier this year, prior to New York Fashion Week, a group of models, joined by Sen. Hoylman-Sigal, held a rally in favor of the law. Beverly Johnson, the first Black model to appear on Vogue and also one of the only dolls I ever had growing up, spoke about how the legislation would fight discrimination in the industry as well.

“The lack of regulation in our industry makes it so much more difficult for Black models to flourish,” Johnson said. “Black models are fighting for basic dignity and respect.”

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There should not be any industry in which it is acceptable to treat people this way, period. Hopefully, the third time will be the charm and this will be the year the legislation passes.

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