Whereas women are affected more adversely by same-sex images, men weren't bothered by the pics of strapping beefcakes they were shown. Rather, "the cultural expectation for men is not that they have to be as attractive as their peers, but that they need to be attractive enough to be sexually appealing to women." Hence, the men who were given magazines full of pictures of "idealized" women who were "out of their league" unsurprisingly ended up feeling less than great about their own bodies by the end of the study.

As Professor Jennifer Aubrey notes, "the exposure to objectified females increased self-consciousness because men are reminded that in order to be sexually or romantically involved with a woman of similar attractiveness, they need to conform to strict appearance standards." We're guessing men aren't devoting a lot of conscious thought to this, which already makes the phenomenon somewhat less severe. But even so, it does beg a question: Models make women feel bad. They make men feel bad. So who exactly are they supposed to be appealing to?

Surprisingly, Female Models Have Negative Effect On Men [PhysOrg]

OMG. OH NOES. THIS MODDLE HAZ NO CAPSHUN. RITE A SUGGESSHUN IN TEH COMMINTZ!!!11!! TEH WINNR GITZ A CHEEZBURGR. SRSLY.

Earlier: LOLVogue: Teh Billee Goatz Gruff (And Contest!)
LOLVogue: I Can Haz Wind Tunnel?
LOLVogue: All Dat Glitterz Iz Mah Pantz
LOLVogue: Superhero Photo Shoot Gets Super Stoopid
French LOLVogue: I Can Has My Close-Up?
I Can Has Jeetann? C'est LOLVogue En Faux Français
LOLVogue: Teh Hare Toss & Teh Bunnee Hop
LOLVogue: Tard Moddles & Bahlinceeyagga
Bon Joor, C'est Paris LOLVogue Encore!
LOLVogue: Sheez Over Ayteen, I Sware
LOLVogue: Hungry Moddles & Rorschach Tests
LOLVogue: Carbs, Botox & Pink-Eye
LOLVogue: Good Help Is Hard To Find
Mon Dieu! C'est French LOLVogue: Shoulders, Champagne and Cigarettes
LOLVogue: Starving Models & Marionettes
LOL'Vogue': Scarves, Silverware & Scooters

Related: LOLLost: Srsly, Guiz, Dis Izland Is Weeerd

(Click on any image to begin the gallery)

Images via Telegraph

So, the girls told me that Whitney got her own dressing room, separate from the rest of the cast. There was a sign on her door that said "Whitney and Baxter (dog)." So they were thinking that she had this little lap dog thing, but then Whitney came out with this plus size dog:

Claire brought out her husband and daughter, who's also a model. She's fucking adorable. She kept smiling and pointing at the cameras.

Then Tyra told this story about how, when she was working in Europe and living with other models, some model woke her up in the middle of the night and accused her of stealing her alarm clock. This is not the first time I've heard this story. She also told it during the cycle when Bre accused Nicole of stealing her granola bar or whatever the fuck it was.

Notice how bored the girls look when she's telling the story? They were actually bored in general throughout this episode. I think because Tyra did all the talking, and didn't ask them that many questions. Take a look:

When we were hanging out with Amy and Lauren, Rich and I wanted to know what it was like when Tyra and the Jays would do their weird performance art/freak out things in front of them (like in this season when they kind of reenacted a butchered version of Snow White, with Miss J as the wicked witch, Mr. Jay as some kind of prince, and Tyra eating an apple that she slobbered all over herself). We were like, "Did you just burst out laughing at them?" Amy said that they didn't because they were kind of afraid that they'd get in trouble if they did. I bet they would've too!

Earlier: Top Model Alums Give Advice On Sex (Animal And Otherwise)

Anyway, Neel's not alone in his quest for women who are, let's say, out of his league. According to a new (no shit) study, "men were less likely than women to think that their own lack of attractiveness — based both on a self assessment and the ratings of others — should stand in the way of a date with someone 'hot,'" MSNBC reports.

According to a recent article in Psychological Science, less than perfect men "hedge their bets by asking for more dates. In fact, the men in the study requested a full 240 percent more dates than the women. Researchers didn't look at how many of these online come-ons were successful, but the number of dates most men asked for might be a sign that the less attractive among us — even the men — recognize that they may have to settle for dating someone who is closer to them on the 'hotness' scale." However, some of the grandiose ambitions of schlubby dudes may have to do with what they see on TV and in movies. MSNBC reports, "Leonard Lee, an assistant professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Business, thinks these far-fetched movie and TV couples might explain why unfortunate-looking men tend to hold out such high hopes."

But, Lee points out something important: "unattractive guys eventually learn that their chances are slim [with uber hot ladies] regardless of what they see on screen. There’s another important finding in the study, he says: The 10s among us, both male and female, want only to date other 10s," MSNBC notes.

How Not to Hit On Models: A Primer [NY Mag]
Why Guys Go Gor Outta-Their-League Ladies

Earlier: This Weekend I Weathered A Fashion Hurricane For Rosa, Patricia & Reese

Doing 20 editorial looks, solo, against a grey studio backdrop, with nary a prop in sight and no organizing principle to the clothes other than “Fall silhouettes!” probably approaches my idea of hell. You're not playing a character, you don't have an evocative setting, and there isn't even a particular mood or feel the editorial is intended to convey — it's just you and your basic posing repertoire, alone in a brightly lit box. No wonder Anna Rachford of Woodstock, IL, is sporting basically the same position and expression in three of the above shots; there’s no story here. What unites this spread other than the fact that it's fall, and, yes, this might necessitate the donning of coats and knitwear? We see this editorial every season. It's the fashion equivalent of those insipid freshmen-oriented survey classes where the reading list is such a ragbag (you know, Middlemarch and Fielding and Frankenstein and Borges for good measure) that you wonder just what in hell the professor was thinking. Probably that delivering lectures that attained their mature form in 1973 is a hoot when you have tenure. And probably that an appreciation for literature is an admirable social grace suitable for the weekend delectation of young ladies' minds. I'm not much given to puffery in my novels and I like it even less in my fashion.



Oh, no, tights! Once I did a fall lookbook for an Asian client and we had to shoot two dozen some outfits in one day — and every single get-up came with a different pair of brightly colored tights. And, because the client’s line was designed with its shorter-legged market in mind, the tights went up only about as far as my knees, and what with the quick changing and the many layers, I was already sweating from every pore since of course it was July, and I sensed even at the time that this epic struggle of Model v. Unyielding Spandex, times 24, was, even if I prevailed (and, you'll be glad to know, I did live to model another day!), going to become the stuff of panicked flashbacks. At one point there was an assistant stylist poised at each thigh, firmly yanking at the waistband of a pair of aubergine wool-blend tights while I sort of jumped up and down in place and the photographer's assistant tried to look like he wasn't peeping. Tights, oh God. You weren't there, man!



I have no idea what Anna’s doing in that green psychedelic drum majorette getup, either. Sending imaginary semaphore for “Send Help Trapped In Photoshoot”? Directing the landings of nearby aircraft? Unseen shadow puppets? Let's chalk it up to studio daze and move on.



Eva Poloniová says that the hardest thing about modeling is “Wearing beautiful clothes without being able to keep them.” Funny you should say so, Eva, given you’ve shimmied into a $3,040 Prada dress — and I’m guessing your paycheck for the edit was $100 or so for the day. Before agency commission, natch! Keep trawling those sample sales, darling. You never know.



This next story is all about female fashion icons who wore pants: for some reason, someone decided Meg Ryan belonged on the list with Marlene Dietrich and Diane Keaton, and, also for some reason, someone determined that a blonde Russian was qualified to impersonate every “iconic” woman who wore pants, ever. Nevermind; I kind of can’t dislike the girl. Valerie Avdeyeva said her most memorable experience was posing on an Argentine glacier — cool! (There’s nothing that drives me deeper into apoplexy than a model who gets to go to Morocco or Iceland or Papua New Guinea for an editorial who comes back and shrugs, “It was okay, I guess. The food was, like, really weird.”) And Valerie parried back a stupid question about which celebrity she’d most like to meet with a cheery reference to the author of Franny and Zooey! Plus she said she couldn’t function without her iPod and her eyelash curler — that’s a practicality/frivolity ratio I can get behind. Even if she doesn’t give me any Jane Birkin in this picture, it's not her fault Birkin was an incorrigible brunette.



Seriously?



Whoa. She eats candy bars. Valerie is officially new favorite model material!



Oh God. Janis Joplin sings a song called “Rose” — so we have to represent the (brunette!) hippie idol (in $1395 pants and a $2055 blouse!) swaying beatifically and staring at a prop rose? Weak.

(Models were counted as being "ambiguous/mixed race" if we weren't sure what race they are (like the Kate Spade ads where the model was covered up), they were obviously of mixed race (Kimora Lee Simmons—still starring in her own ads!), or a non-European Hispanic woman.)

Here are the results:

Lucky:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 2 (2 celebrity/non-models)
• Total Black models: 16 (4 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 109 (11 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 16 (4 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 143
TOTAL ADS: 151

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 5
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 1

TOTAL MODELS: 6
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 3

Cosmopolitan:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 15 (7 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 80 (12 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 9 (2 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 104
TOTAL ADS: 109

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 2 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 0

TOTAL MODELS: 2
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 2

Glamour:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 2 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total Black models: 14 (4 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 91 (12 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 10 (2 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 117
TOTAL ADS: 115

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 4 (2 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 1

TOTAL MODELS: 5
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 4

Allure:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 15 (3 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 69 (9 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 12 (3 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 96
TOTAL ADS: 81

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 4
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 1

TOTAL MODELS: 5
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 5

Teen Vogue:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 3
• Total Black models: 14 (4 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 83 (13 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 7 (3 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 74
TOTAL ADS: 94

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 1
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 2
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 1 (1 celebrity/non-model)

TOTAL MODELS: 4
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 4

Marie Claire:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 3 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total Black models: 8 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total White models: 70 (7 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 13 (7 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 94
TOTAL ADS: 102

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 3
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 1 (1 celebrity/non-model)

TOTAL MODELS: 4
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 5

Harper's Bazaar:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 3 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total Black models: 6 (1 celebrity/ non-model)
• Total White models: 140 (13 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 14 (5 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 163
TOTAL ADS: 152

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 2
• Total Black models: 3
• Total White models: 14
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 0

TOTAL MODELS: 19
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 12

Elle:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 4
• Total Black models: 14 (6 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 187 (12 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 16 (4 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 221
TOTAL ADS: 205

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 1
• Total White models: 9 (2 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 1 (1 celebrity/non-model)

TOTAL MODELS: 11
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 9

Vogue:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 7 (2 celebrity/non-models)
• Total Black models: 9 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total White models: 236 (14 celebrity non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 9 (3 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 261
TOTAL ADS: 214

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 0
• Total Black models: 0
• Total White models: 9 (1 celebrity/non-model)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 0

TOTAL MODELS: 9
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 7

Overall Totals:
Advertisements:
• Total Asian models: 24 (7 celebrity/non-models)
• Total Black models: 111 (31 celebrity/non-models)
• Total White models: 1,065 (93 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 106 (33 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 1,273
TOTAL ADS: 1,223

Fashion Spreads:
• Total Asian models: 3
• Total Black models: 4
• Total White models: 38 (6 celebrity/non-models)
• Total ambiguous race/mixed race models: 6 (3 celebrity/non-models)

TOTAL MODELS: 65
TOTAL FASHION SPREADS: 51

This means that in advertising, out of 1,273 ads, if 24 Asian models were used, that is 1.8% Asian. And 111 black models might seem like a lot, but that's actually 8.7% black. 1,065 white models out of 1,273 ads means the ads were 83% white.

As for the fashion spreads, 3 Asian models out of 65 means 4.6% Asian representation. And despite the efforts of Bazaar, the models were only 6% black.

Related:
Italian Vogue's Black Issue: A Guided Tour [Jezebel]
Fashion Week Runways Are Almost A Total Whitewash [Jezebel]

Is it just me or does Raquel Zimmerman's makeup look caked on? I think Raquel has noticed. I think this makes Raquel unhappy.

Editors love this shot. Where the model allows food to approach her mouth area, but displays no other sign of an appetite. Such beautiful restraint, Ms. Z!

Whereas in every other picture, Raquel could be that lovely secretary your Mom had in the 1980s, frizzy perm, ill-fitting rayon turtlenecks and all, in this one shot she's suddenly vamping it up in evening wear and wanting to show us her tits. Strange. And have you noticed her rainbow of manicures? Budget 20 minutes in the chair for every hue (in addition to this page's basic red, I count gold, nude, hot pink, and dead skin taupe.)


This isn’t an editorial, it’s just an illustration for Allure’s helpful beauty story about how everyone could probably do with a peel, and you should totally forget that whole off-putting Samantha-on-SATC thing. But I’d like to say, having posed for illustrations like this, that standing stock still with goop on your face is never fun. The cream is drying uncomfortably on your skin, it always takes forever for the assistants to light it, and getting the shot depends on such an infinite range of minutae — move the brush 1/8” to the left, now down, no, back over a tad, okay now open your mouth, no, less open, somebody fix her eyebrow now, okay the hair thing I said, yeah, it's in the way again — that it can be downright maddening. Which is ironic, because this shot is always for a beauty story, and beauty stories are supposed to be about zen and centredness and the feminine transcendent! But what really sucks is the images are so servicey and decontextualized that they are worthless for your modeling portfolio. Also: Now I’m pretty sure I “need” a peel. Thanks for nothing, Allure.


The essence of successful modeling can sometimes be the model’s ability to melt so completely into one picture that you don’t recognize her in the next. It took me a minute to even see that it was Inguna Butane here; this is a good start.


And here's her masterstroke. Without resorting to goofy expressions or gimmicks, purely by playing the angles of her face, Inguna so transforms within this series that at first I thought the edit had two models. Seriously. Look back real quick. Are you even sure it's the same person? Latvians. So spooky.


Julia Stegner is bravely standing in 5" heels on the edge of a cliff in Maine. For fashion. As the photographer said in his contributor's note, "We were lucky the wind cooperated." Lucky, indeed! Now that’s dedication to the craft.

Anyway. After re-evaluating its plan to improve models’ health, the British Fashion Council announced that nobody will have to get a doctor’s certificate to walk the runway. But the BFC would like you to know that some of its proposals are going ahead: under-16s won’t be on the catwalks, and alcoholic beverages won’t be backstage.

To which I say, thanks for nothing, British Fashion Council! Bad enough that 90% of shows — yes, even the high-profile ones — don’t even pay, you have to take my free booze as well?

Seriously, though, I’m just tickled that so many people take an interest in my and my colleagues’ health. I know your motivations are pure, and that the politicians involved in advancing this cause aren’t the slightest bit interested in furthering their own electoral ambitions by coat-tailing on a high-profile and heavily mediatized industry’s most visible issue. I’m happy that there have been symposia and inquiries and initiatives and hectoring articles in the press.

I don’t even mean that entirely sarcastically: as uncomfortable as it makes me for strangers to think about my health as an Issue, let alone their issue, and as much as I privately grit my teeth and think of all those (well-meaning?) articles whenever a cool and interesting-looking chick I meet at a party finds out what I do for a living and immediately starts a conversation about dieting, it is good news that that people are at least thinking about models’ well-being. It doesn’t pay to be too flippant when, after all, people have died.

But I have one solution, guaranteed effective, that doesn’t involve forcing me to go to a doctor and fork over more cash than I make working a show — hell, more cash than I made during most entire fashion weeks — to answer questions about my eating habits a five-year-old could intuit the “correct” answers to.

It doesn’t involve agencies better screening their charges for disordered eating (although come to think of it that would be nice), it doesn’t involve relying on Body Mass Index (I have never, not for a day in my life, had a BMI in the “normal” range — and my 35” hips mean I’m considered a heifer by certain clients), it doesn’t involve open letters and unkept, unkeepable pledges to put “full bodied, healthy and radiant Mediterranean types” on the catwalk. It also doesn’t involve taking away anyone’s hard-earned mini bottle of champagne.

If the fashion industry is to change the image it presents, clients — magazines and designers — will need to stop demanding, preferring, and booking underweight models.

Plenty of clients pay lip service to the idea of not promoting an ideal that plenty of models have a hard time living up to (Ali Michaels and her amenorrhea, Coco Rocha and her diuretics). But I have worked at 110 lbs and I've worked at 120 lbs. And when I’m thinner, I just seem to book jobs much more consistently, no matter the city. Clients bite when I happen to look my boniest.

Other approaches to the problem have their drawbacks. The reason the BFI abandoned some of the proposals they spent so many months developing was because they felt they would be unenforceable, would fail to achieve the desired affect — and because of the lack of international coordination.

The industry has a way of reducing ideas with potential to well-intentioned sop. Madrid’s decision to only permit models with BMIs of 18 or over to work? When I worked in Spain, my booker actually told me, “Don’t think just because this is Spain you can eat whatever you want and get fat, Tatiana. You need to watch those hips.” Milan’s vaunted no-more-size-zero-girls solution — that thing they were going to do with having models’ BMIs be over 18 and models themselves be over 16? Last time I was in Milan, my model apartment roommate had just turned 15, and the only mention of health was this message, inscribed inside the back cover of my portfolio book:

THE RIGHT BALANCE

Wellness and Beauty. Beautiful,bud Healthy above all. Ask a specialist for any diet program, or physical activity you intend to start. For any information, contact Associazione Servizi Moda or you Model Agency.

I never did contact the ASSEM. But I live in hope that the fashion industry will find a way to associate beauty with health with more than just some type on a page.

Related:Fashion Capitals End London’s Plan To Ban Size Zero [Times of London]

In this ventriloquism metaphor, Christie's still-flawless California good looks are the dummy, and the hand of "keeping up appearances" is far, far up Christie's behind. Indeed, she is very rich, and even though she hopes to take up surfing and get back into "shell painting," it's sort of hard to believe that anyone's American dream involves your husband fucking a teenager in your new Hamptons home.

Which brings me to Gerren Taylor, who still dreams of being a Christie Brinkley one day. You see, Gerren made a big splash when she hit the catwalks for the first time at age 12. That year, she walked for Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, Betsey Johnson and Tracy Reese. She became the first African-American to book a Marc Jacobs campaign, and according to the L.A. Times, everyone expected Gerren to be the next big thing. Except then she grew. The next year, "She went to Europe to try her luck at the fashion weeks there, but was told by booking agents in Paris that 38-inch hips on a pole-thin 6-foot frame made her too big to model. (They wanted her to diet down to 35 inches.) In less than two years, her career had come to a halt."

Gerren is now 18, and there's a documentary about her brief foray into modeling called America the Beautiful that premieres in L.A. this week. "In 2005, when Taylor returns from Europe humiliated, we watch her hit rock bottom," The L.A Times reports. "Agonizing over the flaws she perceives in her pancake flat stomach, her flawless face looks straight into the camera and she says, 'I'm ugly.'"

Gerren hoped to at least have enough money from her modeling days to pay for college, and she didn't even come away with that. After I read the piece, I initially felt bad for her. It sucks that she was made to feel bad about looks, and I imagine part of why she was encouraged to be a model by her mother was so that she could make money for college. But then I thought about it for a while, and I stopped feeling that bad for her in particular. Hundreds of thousands of shorter, less genetically blessed American women are having trouble paying for college. Many of them have to actually work retail jobs (the horror!) or rely on academic scholarships and loans to get an education, and the financial disadvantage sucks for everyone. Why should Gerren get a free pass because she's beautiful? And furthermore, why are there so many goddamn articles about aspiring models? Aren't there young women out there doing anything more interesting with their time?

It's time for some real talk. I don't care what Tyra Banks tells you, but not all women are meant to be models, and if you need to have an eating disorder to be model skinny, get another career. And as Christie Brinkley and her flashing veneers prove, even if you are a wildly successful model who remains strikingly gorgeous into your 40s, your life can be just as big a hot mess as the average lady on Maury. Of course, it's human to be fascinated by outlandish beauty. That's what photographs are for. I'm just over so many words being spilled on those image makers.

This Year’s Model [New York Magazine]
Model Gerren Taylor's Short But Stunning Fashion Career Seen In 'America The Beautiful' [LAT]
Where the Only Hiking Is Toward the Runway [Washington Post]

Tatiana, our favorite anonymous fashion model, has got her long-fingered, well-manicured hands on the not-so-svelte September issues of our "favorite" ladymags. One day after digging into that horrendous Philip Nobel piece, Tatiana trains her eye on the fashion editorials in the newest issue of Elle...and gets annoyed by the expensive shit and overplayed poses.

Reading a September ladymag is sort of like picking up a Russian novel. Fall's perennial Biggest Issues Ever each weigh more than a laptop, and boast a recurring cast of characters whose minute shifts in fortune are as fascinating to the interested observer as any copy of Dead Souls. But with the added bonus of the inevitable Photoshop disasters! Join me, your intrepid Anonymous Model, after the jump as I critique the fashion spreads and campaigns immortalized in the 636 fascinating pages of the latest Elle magazine.

Elle adds six (6!) whole stories to the fashion discourse this season. Seven (7!) if you count the spread where the posing comes courtesy of a French singer I've never heard of who tends to lose her neck in photos — which I, as a model who objects to the idea that any old spackled-up five-foot-nothing permabronzed celebutard who thinks symmetrical features parlay into magnetism can do what I do, do not.

Eleven pages purport to illustrate ten archetypal New! Fall! Trends! — wanna be a Rocker? You will need this thing called a leather jacket — and nine images explore the supposed manifest accord between the "architectural" mood of the coming season and the pyramids at Giza. (No, really.) Hana Soupukova jumps around in ten pages spliced in directly from September, 1988, and then there's an eight-look fellatio of Giorgio Armani. Involving silver Hammer pants and slippers. Stephanie Seymour lends her magnificent schnoz to the shilling of denim and a $970 belt, and the obligatory accessories shoot is carried off with such aplomb by the sublimely beautiful Alison Nix that I actually don't think I've got any snark to spread on that account.

The my-wrist-is-double-jointed inverted-akimbo pose is foundational to any model's repertoire. Also helpful is the "Huh?" skittery-eyed face. You don't know if she's angry or about to burst into tears!

The broken-doll lean. Very Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. Things to keep in mind: The red eyeshadow-black-eyeliner and silver lipstick combo on Mia Rosing probably took a half an hour to apply. And Moesha Lewis's eyelids appear to be covered in pulverized Reynolds Wrap. Given the drastic hair and makeup changes in this edit, I have a feeling this was one of those interminable 12-hour stir-crazy studio days where your face feels scraped down to its pores by the fifth trip to the stylist's chair. Upon which point you realize that it's already lunch, and you're only on Look Four, and you had just better buck up and take deep breaths and sip water through a straw because things are going to get worse before they get better.

Mia! We just saw you prove you could turn your arms around in their sockets. No need to belabor the point; I understand those long hours in a white box can be a little addling, but repeating poses within the same editorial just makes us models look dumb. And memory-impaired.

All right, by the third repetition, I'm starting to get the sense that the angry-hands-on-hips-shoulder-thrust move was something the photographer asked you to do. I'm sorry fashion is so boring. (Also: Holy crap those false lashes must've sucked to take off but if your booker knows what's what at least this pic will be in your book. Which will totally almost make up for the fact that you probably got a hundred bucks plus lunch for your day's labors!)

May the makeup artist who did this never work again.

No, I do not understand this crotch gusset, either. Or why a string of busted Christmas tree globes makes a suitable necklace.

And so we come to the Armani spread. To attempt to justify this effervescent froth of advertiser-pandering, the editorial is interrupted by a one-page essay by Amanda Marshall ("We all know Armani world...It's sleek and tonal, functional and dramatic, languid and glamorously noir...") that partly explains Armani's role in making Milan the fashion capitol it is today. Which curiously doesn't explain why this story was shot...in Venice!

Also unexplained is why, when the most striking item pictured on this page is the pair of weird and heavy-looking lens-less eyeglasses Victoria Wallace is wearing, they are the only item not listed in the credits. Filigree'd butterfly eyewear of indeterminable provenance is so hot this season.

Seriously, making our girl pose in front of the Centro Salute Mentale is just unkind. Especially after that supremely unkind red-eyed, spread-legged, flash-washed shot in the purple dress.

And now we come to my new favorite model, Alison Nix! It's hard to make accessories look cool without being cheesy, trite, or fake. I bet her forearm was covered in nasty red pinchmarks from all the bangles and watches that must have weighed a ton. But you'd never know it to look at those clear blue eyes! They say, Buy this ridiculously small plaid purse! And she's so heartstoppingly lovely, I, who ought to be inured to every machination of fashion marketing, almost want that purse. That purse that costs more than my rent. (On second thoughts, fuck you and your need-manufacturing, Alison!)

All is forgiven. Wow. Just wow. The stylist totally cheated that watch around to an unholy-unnatural angle for the benefit of the shot, but you pull it off in that "What? I always wear my watch at a convenient angle for passing photographers" nonchalant supermodelish way. Along with horizontal striped tights, a bag that looks like it grew barnacles, and a frankly ridiculous turquoise and orange pheasant feather hat. Which collection of absurd elements would look stupid on most people — and most models! — but somehow, upon seeing this image, all I want to do is stare at it long enough for it to imprint on my retinas. You are a vision, Ms. Nix. And a helluva magazine closer.

Earlier: September Glamour Actually Makes Fashion Fun — And Freckled
Elle Writer's Ex: "It's A Strange Luxury To See Someone Else's Version Of Your Life

*Hate her because you have to Google her literary puns!

The Gallstone Of Rouen
By Tatiana

I would be dropping by today with a jaunty rumination on my work life — I shot a fascinating catalog this week, let me tell you — but I'm afraid I've had something on my mind that has so angered me and colonized my thoughts that I've found myself motivated to rant at length to strangers in bars and to thrash out incendiary e-mails at times when a sensible person would be sleeping. I am afraid this current rage prevents me from mustering the wherewithal to make irreverent fashion commentaries or impugn the good reputation of any of the variety of hardworking artisans I encounter at work.

My problem has a name. A man's name.

My dating life as a model is one of the topics I'm least inclined to broach, but that people seem to take the most interest in. While ordinarily I wouldn't write about my personal life in public, I'm anonymous, I'm prepared to camouflage the identities of the wicked, and fundamentally I think tackling the common assumption that — how was it put recently? "Girls who look like Jessica Alba typically do not get jilted" is worth the airing of dirty laundry.

It is, I regret to inform you all, absolutely no easier to convince a guy to treat you with love and decency and even basic respect when you're 5'10" and have decent facial symmetry. This month has proven to be a horror of horrors.

There was the hipster who tolerated my hand on his knee in three different bars before going outside to make a phone call and inexplicably greeting a woman with a kiss on the mouth. "Uh, that's my girlfriend. Sort of," he explained. There was the funny guy from the party who, as soon as he had my e-mail, started sending irritatingly entitled missives with subject lines like "So: When are you coming to see me, Tatiana?" There was the dashing Serb who walked with me on the shores of a lake, and took my hand while he explained how 9/11 was an inside job. There was the writer in his mid-thirties who, all of five minutes after meeting me at a nightclub, held me close and whispered in my ear, "I wanna put a baby inside you."

Assholes, jerks, and weirdos like these are the reason my father forwards me headlines like Study: 1 in 4 adults in NYC have herpes
with the winning reminder "Let's be careful out there, Tati!"

But above all, there was the guy I'm going to call The Guy. The Guy is the cause of 99% of this indignation; I can't figure out if I'm primarily hurt that he managed to anger me so, or angry that he managed to hurt me so, but I've been some non-shelf-stable combination of the above for over a week now.

The Guy and I had been carrying on a torrid epistolary relationship for the past few months while I traveled to various of the world cities where fashion is practiced. E-mails were sent. Handwritten letters with carefully selected philately were exchanged. Cells buzzed with txt msgs five and ten times a day. Phone bills were obscene; our conversations no less so. [Torrid" is one way of putting it. "Florid" might work better. But you know, context. -Moe]

It was a mistake, I now realize, to ever wager so much on the character of a boy I'd not slept with. And who was 20.

When he and I both turned up in Paris — partly to see each other, partly to work, partly to travel — we promptly remedied that first error. We visited the Musée D'orsay, we took in a concert, we sat in many charming cafés, we went to Sacré Coeur and Sainte-Chapelle and Shakespeare and Co. and then got tipsy with local students on the banks of the Seine. We stayed up all night talking, just like we had done earlier in the summer, when an ocean separated us. And it was wonderful.

It lasted two days before, after a distracted performance at a dinner I'd cooked, he said he was thinking of getting out of town. Just going somewhere; it was summer, he was footloose, he didn't want to be "bogged down" with me and spend more time in Paris when there was the whole of France out there to explore. In fact, maybe he would borrow my laptop and look up some train schedules right now, while I did the dishes? In fact, maybe he would grab his bag and go to the train station and catch that 11:20 departure for a cool-sounding little town in Normandy. Maybe I could meet him at the weekend in Rouen?

I went with him to the station while he assured me that nothing was wrong.

In Rouen, The Guy was half an hour late to meet me at the station — which to my mind, speaks to a certain disinterest, a certain conflict, perhaps even a certain period of talking-oneself-into actually going through with the meeting. He was petulant, spacey, bored-seeming; his every gesture seemed intended to communicate the fact that I was the worst company imaginable. When The Guy wasn't grabbing my hand as we walked down the cobblestone streets, he was telling me that holding hands made him feel like too much of a couple. The second afternoon, he borrowed my cell phone to call the architecture student he'd hooked up with the night before my arrival.

At dinner that night, he remarked, for probably the fifth time, that traveling alone was "really fun." After an opera, he said I had "relationship tentacles" that were reaching out to ensnare him — an old saw about my supposed transference of affections directly from the last guy I dated, a man The Guy never even met. The evening I left for Paris, I had to ask him to walk me to the station; he stood on the platform, tolerated a kiss, commented that the beer I'd had with lunch was still on my breath, and headed back into the melee with a cheerful "See ya!"

Shy and never at my best in person, I did my usual thing and sent him an irate e-mail. "Narcissistic," I wrote. And "Relationship tentacles?!" And "Neurotic. Unable to concentrate. Flighty. Refused to fuck me." Baudelaire had his Spleen of Paris, I was thoroughly in the mode of the Gall of Rouen.

I received back a missive that included a charming anecdote about how he used to fight with his mother a lot when he was a boy. And the line "I have issues with women." And the line "Maybe I'm gay? I should probably investigate that some day."

And then: total radio silence. The Guy who'd sent me dozens of texts a day, e-mails several times weekly, phone calls on the days he didn't e-mail, letters every few weeks, for two months just slunk off into the French countryside. I wish I could say it hadn't so disappointed me, but when the most promising romantic connection you've had in months — seriously, 99% of the guys I meet present a comparable level of interest to the conspiracy-theorist Serb and the writer-creep and the entitled-funnyman and the it's-complicated hipster, which is to say, zero interest at all — is with an extremely intelligent, worldly, funny, hot, good-in-bed dude you can take to the opera who then just up and hightails it, it hurts.

Before he left Paris again for good, I wheedled five hours and a handful of explanations from him. The man who insisted I re-read The Blind Watchmaker the night we met suddenly found me "too intellectual." My favorite author was someone he, personally, found "pessimistic and dry," and it spoke volumes about my personality that I attached a "talismanic authority" to the author's works and persona. ("So," mused a friend, "if you liked Ann Rice, you'd be too much of a bloodsucker?") I have the wrong color hair and I'm an atheist lacking in appreciation for life's mysteries.

Then he borrowed 20 Euro to get a bus to the airport and walked out of my life.

I hate men.

I've been reading some Ann Carson lately, and I came across a quote that made me shudder:

"There is something profoundly uneventful about a man-made lake, like the self-knowledge of a radical skeptic."

As you might have guessed, I am radically skeptical. I consider it one of my finer traits: my mind wants to poke holes, to slaughter cows, to draw back green velvet curtains, and I suppose I find it ultimately satisfying when the inevitable disappointment clicks into place. I felt exhilarated at 13 when I determined the religion whose ritual and canon had given me such solace as a child (so many rules! so many complicated rules with so much at stake! It was like a puzzle challenge, staying holy), rested on the false premise that there was a God and a heaven to aspire to. I felt glad to have engineered my own sucker-punch. Woolly thinking seems to me a failure of imagination, a failure of brains — a failure to do our greatest evolved traits the service of proper use, and I try to root out my own whenever I notice it.

It was actually only on reading that Carson line that I realized it is possible that my woolliest trait of all — my inexhaustible ability for false consciousness, for convincing myself that what I want is actually perfectly expressed in what he wants, my apparent mania for replying in kind when I'm told that I'm loved — is not only annoyingly ineradicable, but, just perhaps, persistent precisely because of my avowed skepticism. After all, a skeptic is always asking, are you sure? The essence of my problem is that I never am. It's tempting to think that maybe he is.

Which I guess is a roundabout way of saying that being reasonably smart and self-possessed and even having had the matter of one's beauty put to a (sort-of) "objective" test and given a Pass! is no guarantee that assholes won't come calling, and that one won't spend far too much time entertaining them and their deep, unsearchable issues.

I'm reduced to do-as-I-say: Next time someone irksomely seeks out your affection and shies away from your arousal, next time someone uses your phone to call another girl, next time someone who seems perfect on paper acts indifferent in person, don't wait for him to have the presence of mind to figure out that the romance is doomed. Just run the other way. Fast. And to the lucky folks who are not just coming out the other side of an asshole entanglement? Next time someone more recently burned corners you at a bar with a half-hour story of slights ("He said sleeping with me was like sleeping with a relative!"), grin and bear it. And then maybe buy us a drink and do a quick visual check to — yes, absolutely — confirm the absence of any relationship tentacles. That would make us feel much better.

• Vogue is launching a reality TV show. Okay, online, but still. "The show, called Model.Live, tracks three models as they navigate casting calls, catwalks and airports for fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris" reports the Wall Street Journal. The three protagonists are described variously as "kooky", "polished and sophisticated," and "the sweet, new kid." All, presumably, are children and have BMIs in the single digits. For all their excitement about this brave new venture, apparently Vogue has concerns about exposing the seamier side of fashion: "controversial behavior like smoking or drinking." I'm guessing they'll be thrilled if that's as "controversial" as the behavior gets. [WSJ]
• Rachel Zoe is launching a perfume, along with her reality series. “This scent will really reflect her personal style and hopefully finally brand her" says a source. Eau de Raisin, anyone? [Fashion Week Daily]
• La Zoe is also rumored to be O-U-T out as creative consultant at Halston. [ElleUK]

• Rad Sri Lankan rapper MIA is launching a streetwear line, video to promote it. Actually makes more sense than most, as she started as an artist. [BlackBook]
• Rachel Bilson is the face of...um, her own line. Edie Rose for DKNY Jeans. [WWD]
• YSL's famously amazing modern art collection to hit the block at Christie's Paris. It's said to be worth about 600 million and is known to contain Picassos, Warhols and Mondrians.[WWD]
• Speaking of auctions! If you're in New York today and need some curlers, stop by Christie's, where they're auctioning off James Brown's personal effects, including curlers, a dome hair dryer and a lame jumpsuit! [The Independent]
• Define yourself via another arbitrary fashion quiz! (Which, secretly, we love.) Personally, seems "tartan" is my trend for Fall '08! [Guardian]
• So, this juvenile prison in Japan has set prisoners to designing and making accessories. The, um, line includes "cotton aprons, tote bags and pouches controversially emblazoned with the character for ‘jail’" and has become all the rage amongst fashionistas; all products have sold out from the prison's site, and are on backorder. [Daily Express]
• Coldplay wears the same outfit at every gig. The end. [The Sun]
• French Wrangler launches some vaguely Rousseau-inspired ad campaign designed to "encourage who and what we fundamentally are, by putting all that is pure, natural and instinctive back into Man." In reality, this translates to what AdFreak describes accurately as "a minute’s worth of glassy-eyed hippies stumbling around the woods." [AdFreak]
• Anticpated rough second half forces retailers to get creative. [WWD]
• In a case of unfortunate timing, Nike has pulled their re-released retro "Air Stab" sneaker after a rash of violent knife crime sin London. [Telegraph]
• Kidada Jones, aka daughter-of-Quincy, sister-of-Rashida, works in product development for Disney. Here is what she says about her Tinkerbell tat: “She’s sassy, loyal, stubborn and impulsive. She makes no apologies.” [W]
• Yeah, yeah, we know: hemlines predict the economy. [New York Times]
• If the dollar weren't as weak as a new kitten, ShopStyleUK would be an awesome way to source small British designers. [fabsugar]
• Lipstick Queen Poppy King on the Joker's lipstick choices: Jack Nicholson was "the power woman's Joker. He way overdoes the lip liner—very eighties." And the latest iteration? "Heath is the post-post-feminist's Joker. He is so deconstructionist with his red lipstick, it almost comes right back around to the Renaissance!" [Style.com]
• As Fashion Week Daily puts it, "We love anything cause-y, especially when it’s denim. " Um, I guess we agree, but now just want to distance ourselves from that quote. The caus-y denim in question? Aristocrat denim's new line, in which colored thread indicates a cause: "Ovarian Cancer Research Fund is teal, UNITY is yellow, Young Survival Coalition is pink, Love Heals is red and Earth Day Network is green. The jeans are sold at Scoop and 25% of each sale will go to the charity." Cause-y indeed! [Fashion Week Daily]
• A few lucky 20-year-olds get to shake in their boots when Anna Wintour gives the Vogue interns their annual pep talk. Says the memo all the kids receive, "The presentation will start promptly at 9:00am. I recommend that everyone is seated in the auditorium by 8:45am in case Anna begins a few minutes early. If the door is closed when you arrive, do not enter because you will have to walk in front of Anna while she is presenting." [New York Magazine]
• Kimora Lee Simmons on current affairs: "In this economy, the way that things are going right now, I really demand that all my divas young and old look fabulous. And I don't want them to spend their last dime doing it." [Style.com]

This is like that scene from Zoolander where he goes home to his dad and brothers at the mine with snakeskin luggage and a garment bag. Except these two are trying (desperately) to fit in. But the one on the left is wearing a $1700 coat while the one on the right is wearing $375 jeans. Oh, sure, you're ready for hard labor.

She may be all oiled up and "working it" but are those boots appropriate for the factory floor? Asking because of the heel, not because they're $380.

"So I says to him, I says, Phil, you can't make an omelet without breakin' any eggs, yaknowwhatImean?"

Working hard or hardly working?

"With the lights out, it's less dangerous."
"Here we are now, entertain us."
"I feel stupid. And contagious."

This is not going to end well. There's going to be a screwdriver in her eye and whatever is in those pipes is sure to leak onto those Dolce & Gabbana boots. Oh, by the by, this entire ensemble is $1793. In this country, a factory job pays about $30,000. You probably bring home only $21,900 of that, meaning you make $1825 a month. So you'd have $32 left over — or $1.06 a day — to eat with that month if you purchased the clothes pictured.

Didn't Rosie the Riveter have a wee bit more muscle in her arms?

"Haha, isn't it fun to pretend to be blue collar?" "OMG totes, I'm gonna eat Hamburger Helper tonight. Kidding! I've got a reservation at Masa."

Jeremy spoke in class today.

Earlier: Marie Claire's "Outlaw" Look: $13,000 Gown & Black Lipstick
Marie Claire's Vietnam Photo Shoot: Apocalypse Wow
Marie Claire's Oh-So-Realistic Trailer Park Photo Shoot
Marie Claire & The 75-Year-Old Bhutanese Model
'Marie Claire' Editors Went To Italy And All They Got Was This Awesome Photo Shoot

• We learned that dressing for success means always wearing a muumuu.
• We debuted a new feature called Shelf Pleasuring wherein we read 70s books full of sexytimes.
• You guys, friends don't make friends get boob jobs.
• They also don't let you board planes with a ton of weed in your suitcase

• Friends do, however, allow you to develop girl crushes on femi-friendly Current TV hosts.
• Also girl crush material: sofa king gorgeous Indian models<
• Speaking of models, Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova jumped from her apartment building on Sunday night and died. Our Tatiana weighed in on the depersonalization and loneliness rampant in the modeling business.
• But hey! It's not all a bummer this week: we discussed the swoony fanmail we wrote as wee ones.
• So enjoy the long weekend, bitches! This bitch will be celebrating her tail off for the fourth and so should you.

Over the weekend a successful young fashion model touched off a minor media circus by killing herself. Almost immediately, details of the beautiful life cut tragically short swooped in to fill blanks; the apocryphal tale of her "discovery" by benevolent industry scouts; her melancholy poems; how she'd been watching "Ghost" the night before. It was mostly bullshit. But there is something about great beauty that inoculates us to the more mundane realities of life, which was that Ruslana Korshunova was an immigrant from a desperately poor country who came to New York at a scarily young age to make money to send back to her parents. In that way she was no different from the tens of thousands of kids from former socialist states whose parents send them thousands of miles to work in restaurants and gas stations. It's generally more legal, and the living conditions a little nicer, but as our anonymous model columnist Tatiana has discussed before in this space, the people governing a model's fate are no less predatory and self-interested, and the experience is only slightly less anonymous. Herewith, Tatiana's initial thoughts on the suicide of a pretty girl from Almaty:

At around 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, a 20-year-old model named Ruslana Korshunova jumped from the balcony of her ninth floor apartment in New York's financial district. A Kazakhstani of Russian heritage, she had modeled since the age of 15; top London agency Models 1's Debbie Jones tells a great story about her discovery and tracking-down of Korshunova after seeing her pictured at German club in an in-flight magazine. (I suspect Jones is spinning a typical fashion creation myth: Korshunova told UK Elle magazine that when she was 15, she submitted her own photos to the Moscow agency iCasting, a version somewhat shorter on romance and international intrigue but vastly more believable.)

Korshunova followed the usual career path of an Eastern European model — working abroad from a young age to send money back to her parents, who remained in Kazakhstan — albeit with considerably more success than is common. A slight 5'7.5" with braces and Rapunzel-esque hip-length hair, Korshunova nonetheless shot out of the normal model demi-monde of sometimes sweet, sometimes snide, always obsessive commentary on TheFashionSpot.com. She wowed casting agents and booked a slew of clients during her five years in the business. Korshunova worked for Marc Jacobs, Blumarine, Vera Wang,
Paul Smith, DKNY and Moschino; she booked a cosmetics campaign for Clarins and starred in a Nina Ricci perfume ad. She shot with Mario Sorrenti, Patrick Demarchelier, and Paolo Roversi. She had covers for European editions of Vogue and Elle, she had pictures inside American, Japanese, and Italian Vogue. Korshunova, it appeared, had grabbed fashion's brass ring.

She had achieved the kind of career that must have been reasonably consistent, and decently-paid, though of course pursued in total anonymity — even her doorman told the New York Daily News he didn't know the girl he saw return home at 5 a.m. on Saturday was a successful international model.

No doubt this is a story made more interesting in the eyes of some by the allure of Korshunova's profession. Journalists have already taken to calling Korshunova "the beauty," "the lithe looker," "the 5'8" head-turner," "the green-eyed blonde beauty," playing the fashion industry's own exoticizing, objectifying game. On Fox news - where else? — Geraldo Rivera showed "the last images" Korshunova. The camera lingered over her dead body — pale, bloodied, and partly covered by a sheet — while Rivera in a voice-over called Korshunova's ex-boyfriend's description of the model as "a good person" a "kind of a lame quote." I am not linking here on purpose.

It is as a woman, not a mannequin, that I'm sure Korshunova's loved ones will remember her. And irrespective of her field, one has to wonder at the process by which a girl decides to kill herself four days before her 21st birthday.

I did not know Ruslana Korshunova, but I do know something of depersonalization and loneliness of this profession, and its occasional outright miseries (Korshunova also told UK Elle, of her worst professional experience, "We were in the Alps shooting, high
up in the snow, and I was wearing a tiny dress. We were so very cold and it was snowing so hard — we couldn't see a thing. I thought I would not live to see another day.") The Daily News reports that Korshunova wrote long messages in English and Russian on a social networking site; the messages make frequent mention of things like love, desire, dreams, and rainbows; they
read as the missives of a very young girl who has discovered that romance often fails to live up to its promise. Korshunova quoted inspirational Internet poetry about the importance of forgiving quickly, kissing slowly, loving truly, and laughing uncontrollably, which the Daily News apparently mistook for her original work. In March, she wrote, "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" In her most recent post, on May 30, she mused angrily that "Love does not take away from one in order to give to another."

Korshunova spent her last night watching Ghost with her ex-boyfriend, 24-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Artem Perchenok.

Many models would have envied Korshunova's career; many women would have envied her beauty. But clearly, leaving home at 15 to travel the world under the often-lax in loco parentis care of a series of agencies, even when it culminates in a nice Craig McDean editorial and a Dior Beauté campaign or three, can take a devastating toll.

Tyra is obviously a quick study, and in her quest for branding "Tyra" as what she refers to as "attainable fantasy," TyTy has no doubt closely watched her idol Martha Stewart, and has learned from her mistakes as coming off too cold or business-y. Bu it's hard to believe that Tyra's first concern isn't money, particularly because she continually talks about it in the article. Normally cartoonish, she actually comes off like Montgomery Burns.

"I'm frugal," she said. "I've always been this way. When I was young, my mom would give me my allowance, and I'd peel off a little each week and have some to spare." She looked around the room, which had cream industrial carpeting and walls painted in a shade somewhere between cantaloupe and terra cotta. "When we moved into these offices, I didn’t like the carpet," she continued. "But do you know what carpeting costs? It’s really expensive. So, I picked out a color palette that would go with this carpet, and I painted the walls instead. Painting is much less expensive than carpet." She considered this decision for a moment. "One of the first things I ask when I hire someone who deals with the financials of the company is about their spending habits. How you spend money reveals a lot about you."

Only people who super care about money say they're frugal. She also writes in very small print so that she doesn't have to go through notebooks as quickly. And you know that has nothing to do with being green.

Hirschberg remarks on Tyra's weird, yet winning, combination of deliberate details and chaotic improvisation when it comes to her shows and producing projects. But even Tyra herself talks about how her current success was a longtime in the making, a plan she and her mother (her best friend, manager, and onetime stage mother to a child star, although the two would deny that) had carefully mapped out years ago when she first got into modeling.

"My mom said, 'You will not go to Paris without studying the industry first,'" Banks said. "I went to the fashion library in Los Angeles and looked at all the French magazines from the past. My mom explained that I should study the names of the hairdressers, the stylists, the makeup artists, the photographers, the editors and, of course, the designers. I watched videotapes of models walking. My mom said, 'This is not just glamour — it is a business.' So when I arrived in Paris, I was ready.'"

Um, except she never bothered to learn French. LOL!

Once she got to Paris, she "saw that the girls with cosmetic and swimsuit calendars made more money than the high-fashion girls," so when she began to gain too much weight for runway, she looked at it as an opportunity to really cash in with Victoria's Secret contracts and Sports Illustrated covers. She even viewed her skin color as a lucrative opportunity rather than a setback, because at the time, there was no "black Cindy Crawford." as she puts it.

At the end of the day, Tyra—who points out that she doesn't drink and is not into the latest fashions — is just like any other success story: She's a geek who made good. And like most embittered geeks, she wishes to inherit the earth. Or at least to rule it.

"I want power," she said. "The power to make change. I have never been interested in being ‘hot’ or ‘cool.’ I’m not interested in walking down a bunch of red carpets, dating someone famous, being in a big movie. I’ve done those things, and it never felt right. But I do want power and not for financial reasons."

But it's kinda hard to believe that someone so calculating isn't all about the numbers. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Banksable [NYT Magazine]

Okay, two more things:

When discussing looking like a man, Tyra sorta had a bit of 5 o'clock shadow.