And she was adamant that she and her team already do their utmost to safeguard the models signed to their agency: I still take jobs now and then. What else would you be doing? Yet unlike a woman in his position, he doesn't seem overly concerned about losing his looks. You can make up to 10, maybe 20, [euros] a month if you're busy, but you can be shooting back-to-back for up to 16 or 18 hours a day. At first, I was relatively oblivious to the extent of the sexual harassment and abuse in the industry. Very few male models retire as millionaires.
How can you be a male model?
The idea of starting a new, thrilling life in Tokyo, Seoul or Shanghai was tempting. Recent menswear trends have polarized male catwalk modeling, encouraging either extreme muscularity or waifish androgyny. Matthew, a British model, signed up with his first agency while he settled into life in Paris a few months later, he joined Elite, the world's leading agency. It seemed to me like easy money and a shortcut to joining a glamorous elite.
At the age of 20, I fell for that world.
