- I don't have a brain, what do you mean,
I'm a model. - I don't
- That's so crazy, mental health, what is that?
[light music]
- Recently I recapped how my 2019 was.
You know, career-wise, amazing.
Personally, for me, a human being, not a model,
it was not a great year.
- It actually interesting that like fashion
and being around a lot of people who you would think
would think that they're perfect or feel perfect
or look perfect or have perfect lives,
who are deeply unhappy with how they look and their lives.
- As a model, you have to literally have this separation
of yourself where you don't even belong to you anymore,
what it does to your brain is so fucked up,
all the models that I know,
we all have self-esteem problems.
So it's really funny when you see people targeting us
or making fun or thinking that we're this like
super sexy entity, imagine the whole world judging
every pore of your entire body,
who trained you how to cope with that?
- There's a lot of pressure to be
not perfect but yeah to be on for people because
you know, for me personally I never wanna seem like
I'm not grateful for opportunities or come off as a diva
and you know, sometimes I feel like you have to like
try extra hard to be like the happy positive model on set.
- Mental health is really important, I'm only 18
and I'm just going to start working on it.
I want to see myself a few years later
and see how I'm dealing with life.
- I suffer from very bad depression and anxiety.
I've been suffering with it for some time
and I decided like enough is enough,
I'm not gonna keep suffering from this in silence,
I know that there's so many people out there who are going
through the same thing as I'm going through.
- What you see in the media
most times is the highlight reel.
It's okay not to be okay sometimes,
it's okay to be sad,
it's okay to have bad days, those aren't the days
that we're putting on Instagram.
- What's hard is that people still despite like
all of this affirmed tragedy and history that people
still equate success with happiness or confidence
or wholeness and I sometimes don't wanna let people down
in that that's not what it's like.
But that's also not not true in ways,
I do feel so much more full in that I've been able to like
change how people see and feel about themselves
which is so much more fulfilling than I could've imagined.
But sometimes it feels like I get home and I have to like
unzip myself [laughs] hang myself up for the night.
- Some girls join this industry at like an age of 16,
they leave school at this hope of becoming like a model,
a lot of the time it's money
and you know they wanna support themselves
and the people around them and sometimes
like all their work may dry up,
there's always that hope of something new coming through.
But at the end of the day,
they just wanna keep a flow.
- Imagine like being in a workplace where everybodys
always saying like oh my God you look so good
and you're so pretty and whatever, blah blah blah,
your vision of life changes maybe a little bit
so I guess people just get addicted to it
and then they don't wanna leave anymore
so they just rather wanna struggle and stay than leave.
- I think there needs to be a major overhaul
in how girls and people are treated,
not just as objects, but as disposable.
Existing in scarcity is such a dangerous
and violent war zone in any space
and fortunately, you know, this version of scarcity
in which I live in is still very lucky
but it still takes a toll on me
and takes a toll on a lot, a lot of people in this industry
and it's not just models, it's why the competition
and the abuse of power is so pervasive is because
everyone's afraid to get kicked out and to be over
and it's really dangerous.
- I feel like a lot of the models they don't speak up
because they know that they're risking something.
- 'Cause it's dangled in your face that you're replacable.
It's litearlly dangled in your face,
you don't like how you're doing things?
Cool, we can replace you. - Yeah.
- This is why people don't speak up
because the fear. - They feel disposable.
- Yeah, the fear is so strong.
- Sometimes I think like oh, I could use a two month
holiday and then I'm like oh but what if after
those two months no one wants to book be anymore?
Fashion is so fast, you never know like
what the next trend is
and if you're still gonna be in trend.
- There is a lot of turnover,
you know you see models come and you see models go,
I think you know there has to be a discussion
with casting directors and a discussion with editors of
what they want to see and what
makes them want a model to last.
- I think that a lot of models are fearful because
we're often made to feel like if we speak out about
something against a certain client or a brand or designer,
that we're gonna mess up the relationship and therefore
will never be used again.
If something isn't right, we should be able to voice it
without feeling like we're gonna be crucified for it.
- What's the lifetime of a model, how long?
- Everyone says you have five years max.
- Eh, no.
But let's just say--
- Yeah, everyone says you have five years
but if you're smart and you know what you're doing,
you can make it last longer.
- But think about it, if you did it for five years
and it's all these issues would you wanna be like,
oh I'm just gonna speak up,
or I'm just gonna get my bag and dip.
- Yeah. - Do you know what I mean?
- And I feel like a lot of the reason why it lasts
five years is because of the way this industry
- They did it. - Ruins you mentally.
- Yeah. - It's not because
you become ugly or you look
- No. - Or you can't walk anymore.
Most models, they quit. - Yeah.
- They just leave, they just walk away.
No one says you can't model anymore.
- They leave broke, they leave, they leave tainted,
they leave like empty shells of what they once were.
They literally have no more life in them.
- There are so many moving parts
especially being part of an industry with so many different
people that you face a lot of struggles.
You have to wake up every day and choose that happiness
for yourself, not for someone else,
and not based on anyone else.
- I didn't come from any kind of money,
I have dedicated my entire 20s to an industry
in which tells me that in a few years it's gonna be over.
So, it's pretty scary.
And it wears on my mental health,
it has worn on my relationships.
I spent 40% of my life on an airplane.
You know, so yeah, it's definitely changed
but it's also impacted it in other ways
in which like I can always say that no matter what
I changed something and I never envisioned,
you know, I couldn't tell my like chubby 10 year old self
who thought she wasn't gonna do anything in the world.
So, grateful for that.
[light music]