The course, being taught next spring by Professor Wendy Belcher, is offered through the Comparative Literature and African-American Studies departments. Its full title is "Model Memoirs: The Life Stories of International Fashion Models." And yes, there will be in-class visits:

Explores the life-writing of American, African, and Asian women in the fashion industry as a launching point for thinking about race, gender, and class. How do ethnicity and femininity intersect? How are authenticity and difference commodified? How do women construct identities through narrative and negotiate their relationships to their bodies, families, and nations? This course will include guest lectures by fashion editors and models; discussions of contemporary television programs, global fashion, and cultural studies; and student self-narratives about their relationships with cultural standards of beauty, whether vexed or not.

How much I would pay to be a fly on the wall the day the class asks Vogue's Candy Pratts Price how she commodifies authenticity and difference.

Far be it from windbag me to suggest that modeling is lacking in meat for young people's intellectual delectation. (Besides, it's my limited experience of these things that the professors behind the fluffiest-sounding courses team the material with theory from from only the most punishing and willfully obtuse of the French deconstructionists. Either that or my Advanced Topics In Popular Culture: "Breakin' II, Electric Boogaloo" course was just totally hard.) But I can't help but notice that Prof. Belcher hasn't yet fleshed out her reading list. It includes a mere three items: Alek Wek's memoir, Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel, Irina Pantaeva's Siberian Dream, and Jillian Shanebrook's Model: Life Behind the Makeup. Clearly this needs some work.

Given my (onetime) profession and my (eternal) predilection for reading, I have kind of a Thing for books written by models. Often, they're unintentionally hilarious — even before Naomi Campbell came out and admitted she had writer Caroline Upcher to thank for her novel Swan, did anyone actually believe she'd written it? Others can be strangely affecting: Susan Moncur's They Still Shoot Models My Age is awesomely written, if kind of insane. (Among other things, it taught me that notorious gaping asshole photographer David Bailey called his models "ratface.") Shoot is now out of print, but there's no reason the Comp Lit whippersnappers couldn't scour Amazon for second-hand copies. I'd put Crystal Renn's recently released memoir, Hungry — written with Marjorie Ingall — on the list, too. If Belcher is interested in models as women who are permitted, by virtue of their physical aspect, to move frictionlessly across cultures and classes, you could do worse than to consider the experience of a 14-year-old girl from small-town Mississippi thrust into the Manhattan fashion industry.

I have not read Cheryl Diamond's Model: A Memoir, but other sources have said it accurately portrays the realities of modeling. For something with pep and honesty and humor, assign Elyse Sewell's LiveJournal. And definitely make 'em read Waris Dirie's Desert Flower. If they can handle the genital mutilation.

If it were up to me, I'd have the students read all of the above, and then watch Sara Ziff and Ole Schell's documentary, Picture Me. And Frederick Wiseman's Model.

And then, we'd all eat cupcakes and never look at fashion magazines or catalogs or billboards or JC Penney's fliers the same way again.

Image via British Vogue

Princeton's Next Top Model (Class) [The Ink]
Course Details For Model Memoirs: The Life Stories of International Fashion Models [Princeton Registrar]

• Naomi Campbell: "Unfortunately, we are the same as before...People, in the panic of the recession, don't dare to put a girl of colour in their campaign, full stop. Nor of any other race. It's a shame. It's very sad." [Telegraph]

• Designer Tara Subkoff is on the mend following the removal of a benign brain tumor: speedy recovery! [NYPost]
• Let the wild rumpus begin! Hipper-than-thou retailer Opening Ceremony, no stranger to the celebrity vanity project, is carrying a line of faux furs inspired by, yes, Where the Wild Things Are. We're more inspired by the dough suit in In the Night Kitchen, personally. [W]
• Speaking of Opening Ceremony: its Tokyo store opening was predictably sparkly and Olsen-studded. [WWD]
• Apparently high-end retailers - think Tiffany and Neiman's - have taken to holding secret sales for VIPs, so as to get the biz without "diluting their brand" with vulgar door-busters. [TimesUK]
• What does Maria Sharapova like to do? "I'd probably have to say shopping and eating...I mean, I am a girl after all, and there's no better place than New York to shop." What, no chasing men with a sassy sidekick? [WWD]
• TopShop is getting into workout clothes. Because we know we like sweating in "chenille." [WWD]
• "Themes of youthful disdain and playfulness continue in Victoria Beckham's second film for her A/W 09 collection," which you can watch. We don't know about the "disdain," but it's pretty cute. [Dazed Digital]
• Sara Ziff, on her documentary Picture Me: "(T)here's a hierarchy when you pair a 45-year-old male photographer-and many of the photographers are older, heterosexual men-with a 15-year old girl. And I think in a way you're asking for trouble if that girl is totally unsupervised, living miles away from friends and family. It's kind of a no-brainer. There should be some protection for these girls." [Mother Jones]
• Temperley of London is launching an affordable (no, really!) line of their ultra-cool duds, coming this spring. [New York]
• Grace Coddington, on The September Issue: "But my very favorite scene is when Raquel [Zimmermann, the model] was eating pies at the couture. She kept looking at them and saying she wanted one, while we were lacing her into this tiny corset and reminding her she wouldn't fit if she ate one. So she didn't eat them ... and she didn't eat them. Then when the shoot was over she ate, like, a whole pie! It's a funny scene, and she looks absolutely beautiful." Well, yeah: that box of pastries was just sadistic! [New York]
• Wait, what? In that doc, Anna Wintour's daughter, Bee Shaffer, says she wants to be a lawyer. Now, apparently, she's working in theatre. Lady's prerogative, we suppose! [NY Post]
• Well, thank God. Pamela Anderson's addressing the serious dearth of celebrity perfumes, launching "Malibu by Pamela" this fall. [New York]
• Kim Kardashian: "My YRB magazine shoot just came out and I am loving the results! "I really love the transformation and the clothes were amazing!!! This has got to be one of the most unique shoots I've ever done! Not sure I'll ever go for a permanent short cut, but it definitely works for this shoot." She looks kind of like Karen O, weirdly. [People]
• Speaking of covers: if you buy the special Lady Gaga issue of V, you can peel her New Wavy glasses off the mag and wear them yourself! Or, you know, not. [New York]
• Model Lily Cole, who's taken a hiatus to go to university: "I like learning. I was going to do social and political science, then I switched to history of art, but I could have done either. I can get impassioned about politics, but I find studying it can lead to a boxy way of looking at the world, so I was put off studying it." [TimesUK]
• Peter Som on his scaled-down collection: "I have to make sure that every piece I design is special and unique," Som says. "People don't come to me for basics. They come to me for print and for color and for happy clothes." [New York]
• Um. For Fashion's Night Out, which we're almost starting to buy the hype for, Calvin Klein has commissioned "a performance by CK One model Jamie Burke and his band, Burke." That'll pack 'em in. [WWD]
• Alleged designer and convicted rapist Anand Jon is about to learn his fate: he could get life. [Yahoo]
• Michael Kors' description of his trip to South Africa is exactly what you'd guess if you were parodying Michael Kors describing a trip to South Africa. "We saw the big five (lions, leopards, rhino, elephant and buffalo) within the first two days. Truly mind blowing. Chilled out midday at the spa and one day even ended up doing an impromptu yoga session in the bush next to the Jeep." [WWD]
• Tyra sports Alexander Wang on ANTM, leading fashionistas who speculate that she'll start supporting more high fashion. But Ty-Ty is a fickle mistress! [Fashionista]
• Department store shoppers, take note: Miranda Kerr was momentarily blinded by a spritz of "Heavenly Enchanted" perfume at the scent's launch. [NYPost]

Karen Mulder was a blonde 5'10" Dutch teenager who shot to fame after a friend sent in pictures of her to the Elite agency's famous Elite Model Look competition. Within two years, Mulder had given up high school to work full-time for clients like Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, and Versace. She made the covers of British Vogue, Italian Vogue, and various international editions of Elle, among many other magazines. At 21, she bagged a multimillion-dollar multiyear contract with Guess? She was picked as one of Peter Lindbergh's iconic gaggle of leather-clad biker supermodels in American Vogue in 1991, when DUMBO was still thought of as a little dangerous.

That's Mulder second from the right, between Stephanie Seymour and Naomi Campbell. Her career, still managed by Elite, flourished through the 1990s. Mulder capitalized on her wholesome look with commercial gigs, like her two appearances in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition, and she became a Victoria's Secret model. There was a Karen Mulder doll, made by Hasbro. Mulder dated a racecar driver, she dated Prince Albert II of Monaco, she dated a real-estate developer named Jean-Yves Le Fur. They broke up, but it was still Le Fur who picked her up off the floor of her Paris apartment and called the ambulance in the winter of 2002, after Mulder attempted suicide by overdosing on pain pills.

The suicide attempt and the coma she would lie in for two days following it came after Mulder had told the press, "From the beginning, I hated being photographed. For me, it was just an assumed role, and in the end, I didn't know who I really was as a person. Everybody was saying to me, 'Hi, you're fantastic.' But inside, I felt worse from day to day." It came after she laid a formal rape complaint in France against Prince Albert. It came after she said, "My job distracted me from my worries. It enabled me not to be myself, to pretend I was someone else." It came after a notorious appearance on French television where her various claims — that men at Elite had raped her, that she had been coerced into having sex to garner better contracts, that Elite had used her and other models as sex slaves in a ring that extended through the top echelons of French society, implicating politicians, members of the police, and other top officials, that her own father had raped her, that she had been sexually abused by a family friend from the age of 2, that she had been hypnotized and raped, kidnapped and raped, and raped some more — were regarded as so potentially libelous that France 2 not only never aired the segment, but destroyed the master tape. No matter: In a series of more-or-less coherent magazine interviews, Mulder repeated most of her accusations, and added that her agency had encouraged her to use cocaine and heroin. She told the Daily Mail, "They tried to turn me into a prostitute because they thought it would be so easy. I was raped by two bookers. I reported them and they were fired. Another time I was shut in the office of [a high-profile man from the modeling world] for a whole day. All these people who betrayed me I used to love very much. Then I realized how big the conspiracy was. It brought in the government and police, who both used Elite girls. People have tried to kidnap and poison me."

Her suicide attempt came after she was packed off to Montsouris hospital and heavily sedated for five months of treatment for depression and anxiety. (Gerald Marie, the head of Elite Paris and one of the men Mulder had accused of raping her, paid.) It came after Marie was filmed on hidden camera by the BBC trying to give a 15-year-old model £300 for sex, and bragging of how many entrants to the Elite Model Look competition — average age 15 — he was going to sleep with that year. It came after Mulder's attempt at a crossover music career resulted in the release of a cover of "I Am What I Am", which peaked at number 13 on the French pop charts in the summer of 2002. It was after recanting all her rape accusations, and explaining that she was in fact dealing with the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse and had "gone overboard," that the former supermodel tried to kill herself. Since emerging from hospital, and until her arrest yesterday, Mulder has kept a low profile.

How a woman like Mulder, one of those people who journalists are always quick to say "has it all," could fall so far, so fast is not really the question that commands interest here. We all know this story: it's got drugs in it, and predatory older men, and very young women, and the abject self-consciousness of the individual whose worth is in her pictures. It's always more or less the same story, even if Mulder, with her recantations and paranoid stories of kidnapping and poison at the hands of a shadowy "they," isn't always its most credible narrator. It's the story of Wallis Franken, of Ruslana Korshunova, of Katoucha Niane.

It's the story presented in a 60 Minutes segment from 1988 that reported, according to author Ian Halperin, "about the many models who had been drugged, raped, and sexually harassed by the world's top agency owners." (Halperin characterized the segment as "shocking.") It's the story of the BBC's undercover documentary of Elite executives offering to pimp out their models for drugs. (This was seen as "alarming" and "surprising.") It's the story models like Sena Cech are telling when they talk about being coerced into sex by photographers and clients at castings and on the job. (These accounts, and model Sara Ziff's documentary that provides one vehicle for them, were described in the Observer by writer Louise France as both "shocking" and "surprising.")

What amazes even more than how little the story actually differs from telling to telling, how fundamentally the same its elements remain, is our capacity for disbelief. It takes a certain dedication to one's own credulity to insist on being "surprised," "alarmed" and "shocked" by a situation that has been the subject of interest from such under-the-radar media venues as 60 Minutes going back a generation. As a culture, we have so far managed, through every news story and blog post and exposé, to maintain an innocence of the realities of the modeling industry that is almost touching. Or nearly culpable.

Our persistent willingness to be taken aback by the notion that wealthy, powerful, older men, when left in charge of a younger, poorer, female workforce, might generally act as something less than gentlemen, is testament to the power the multibillion-dollar fashion industry wields as an expert creator of narratives. It's this attitude of disbelief that allows agency directors to claim they had no idea some of their models were using cocaine and that some of their bookers were dealing it to them, or that some photographers like to sleep with models and some bookers encourage models to go along with it. Our endless capacity for shock is what gets Karen Mulder sedated and lets Gerald Marie retain, to this day, his position as head of Elite Paris.

The longer we keep up our charade of disbelief, the less the industry will change. One of the most chilling scenes in Sara Ziff's documentary, Picture Me, didn't make the final cut. A model was talking about a photo shoot that took place she was 16, with what Ziff has described as "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names." When the girl left the studio to go to the bathroom between shots, the photographer cornered her in the hall. Then he started touching her dress. "But you're used to this," Ziff reported he said. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then the world-famous photographer put his hand to her crotch and forced his fingers into her vagina. The teenager, who had never even kissed anyone before, just froze and waited for the man to walk away. They finished the shoot, and she never told anyone. The day before the New York premiere, she begged for the scene to be cut.

But more and more models are speaking out. (I have.) If only we can dispense with our "shock" at what they have to say, perhaps this is an industry where some realistic chance for improvement remains.

Supermodel Karen Mulder Arrested For Threatening To Attack Plastic Surgeon
"We Need To See You Without Your Bra, He Told Me. I Was 14. I Didn't Even Have Breasts Yet."

Earlier: The Not-Rape Epidemic: The Modeling Industry Is Anything But Immune
Suicide And Abuse In Fashion's Top Echelon
Ruslana Korshynova, No Longer Anonymous

Full NSFW picture here. Terry Richardson's work was used to illustrate this post because the eminent fashion photographer once said of breaking into modeling, "It's not who you know, it's who you blow. I don't have a hole in my jeans for nothing."

You've noticed: Lindy, Christy, Claudia, Naomi, Cindy, et. al., are back and booking up all the glossy paper stock available. And there's been a renewed focus in the online and print media on identifying the current crop of models as individuals. Even if sometimes that noble sentiment backfires.

Maybe it's a reaction to the anonymized sameishness of much of the fashion imagery of the early oughts; maybe it's an inevitable response to the tedium of featureless plasticine airbrushing. Whatever the reason, it's hard not to notice the interest: the Met Costume Institute gala this year is themed "The Model As Muse," privileging an unusually model-centric understanding of fashion's workings. There was Sara Ziff's documentary, Picture Me. A little more light-hearted is Modelinia, a recent web start-up dedicated to the idea that people want to read (and Maybelline advertising can be sold around) content about models — everyday models who aren't bold-faced names, models who book the Dior makeup test, not the Dior show — and that those readers care enough to wonder what we do in our off hours and if we have any tips on where to buy good vintage clothes. (Eating, drinking, and reading, and the Hell's Kitchen Salvation Army, as though that's any great secret, thanks for asking.) And then there's ModelFeed, a group-blogging platform out of Australia that boasts a bevvy of (predominantly) Aussie model contributors; who knows how that site plans to monetize itself, but for now, its only too happy to lend its bandwidth to former band geek Sarah Stephens' old school photos, and Kieta van Ewyk's many practical uses for rain boots on the family farm.

If those last two of the above betray, at least in theory, allegiance to the idea that models merit acknowledgment as agents, and not just as subjects — that the young women who are seen and not heard deserve a shot at a voice, and the Internet is the perfect venue to provide it — then they also, unfortunately, have a whiff of artificiality about them. We don't actually know anything more about Stephens for having seen her band picture or for knowing that she gets lonely sometimes in Paris; despite the tagline "Not Made Up", this is some mediated content. (The girls' agencies are in on the ModelFeed action.) Modelinia occasionally veers into night-time Tyra territory. (If cinema truth at 24 frames a second, what is web video? Inanity at broadband speed?) There's something a little corporate, a little astroturf-y, about it all.

Not so models' independent, personal blogs, of which there are too many to list. Quality does vary; some of my tribe are simply out-and-out crazypants, and plenty are very keen on making the gig-to-gig life lived in tiny apartments split five ways sound extraordinarily glamorous indeed. (It is not.) More frequently, especially with bigger-name models, personal blogs wither to little more than vehicles for self-promotion. (It's hard to take too much of Sessilee Lopez's oddly flat blog, which might as well be titled, The Various High Heights Of My Fabulous Career Being Fabulous, So Far.) But for every Shannon Stewart ("The Lord Jesus just allowed me to get an agency in Miami, Paris, Munich (Germany), and I am in the process of getting one in Hambourg [sic] !!! Praise the LORD!! haha") there's an Elyse Sewell, making her mark behind the scenes with wit and verve. Below, my picks of five of the "model blogs" that are actually worth taking a look at.

Elyse Sewell

Photo of Elyse Sewell from her blog

Actually, there's no better place to start when considering model blogs and model bloggers than Sewell. Probably the most successful contestant to ever survive the Tyra Banks modeling school, this New Mexico native and one-time would-be medical student has been regaling a dedicated crowd of LiveJournalers with her travels throughout (mainly) Asia since 2004. Her creative neologisms ("streetmeatsketeer", "'conversatation': a conversation destined for eventual incomprehension by virtue of one or both parties' incomplete grasp of the language in use") sparkle, and her vivid descriptions — a bulimic roommate's mess is "a giant speech bubble of drying emesis" — make her blog a must-read. Sewell does a terrific job of writing in such a way that she acknowledges her audience without seeming to pander or overly adjust her content. It's as close to an unvarnished look at the Asian modeling market as one could hope for.

Cameron Russell

Photo of Cameron Russell from her blog

American Cameron Russell — who recently revealed her agency told her to sleep with a photographer when she was 16 — keeps things lively at her blog, Funny and Interesting. Although she generally only obliquely references her work (for clients including French Vogue, Yves Saint Laurent, and Calvin Klein), Russell, a Columbia undergraduate studying economics who does things like run the Boston marathon in her spare time, writes compellingly about everything from pareildolia to grifter nuns on the Acela. There's also sprinklings of fiction and interviews with people working on unusual projects.

Sophie Ward

Photo of Sophie Ward from her blog

If Russell's blog, while unmistakably animated by her personality, is outwardly focused, Sophie Ward's is at the other end of the scale: obviously personal, and esoteric to the point of self-involvement. Yet, due in no small part to her writing skill, it often holds interest. Ward, the older sister of fellow model Gemma (yes, that Gemma), has a sideline career as a writer and editor for the small imprint Paper Castle Press, and maintains her blog, Big Long Open Gash on its site. Ward, who is, like her better-known sister, represented internationally by the powerhouse IMG agency, has shot with Italian Vogue and walked for Armani Privé couture. Ward posts excerpts of what she's reading — about Buddhism, Dadaism, Pablo Neruda — and, although I can't bear to read when she puts up things like edited love letters, feeling too much the voyeuristic creep, I keep coming back in hope of spying acerbic observations like "I have many friends in the fashion industry (oh god, did I just write that?) and they are all lovely acquaintances when you get them for 3 seconds or less, or on a day when they have been eating." (Ward tweaks her posts like a maniac, and perhaps thought better of that particular gem. But I think she's at her best when she's mean, so thank goodness for Google's cache and my Apple Shift 4.)

Coco Rocha

Photo of Coco Rocha playing soccer from her blog

For something completely different: Coco Rocha. The Canadian supermodel — who last year dyed her hair red at the request of none other than Steven Meisel — maintains a blog at the corner of professional and cheery. It shouldn't be interesting, but Rocha is humble and the for-the-fans-ness of the enterprise somehow doesn't taint it. And occasionally she uploads a really funny video, maybe with her equally awesome friend Behati Prinsloo. I think what people object to, or at least what I object to, in a personal blog that feels impersonal, is the betrayal of the author's promise: it seems ungenerous to offer a glimpse behind the curtains, and then to deliver instead triple-exclamation-pointed Seinfeldian platitudes about shoes or tiny airplane seats. Rocha, although extremely measured in what she shares of herself, manages to remain highly likable.



Daul Kim

Photo of Daul Kim from her blog

Probably the weirdest model blog of all — and, just maybe, my favorite — is Daul Kim's. The Koren supermodel's I Like To Fork Myself is an ongoing notation of her working, social, and intellectual life, all delivered in conversational run-ons that clamber down the page, piling one weird and striking observation on top of the next. It's a style that, intentionally or not, perhaps most perfectly mimics the actual whorl of life as a busy working model. This week, at home in Korea, Kim shot for Numéro for two days straight, with wrap times of 4 a.m. and midnight, had her wisdom teeth pulled on the third day, and then worked again until the afternoon. Then she went to London, worked, and DJ'd a party. Now she is, apparently, en route to Paris and Berlin for more work. That she finds the time to make Absolutely Fabulous jokes and share her impressions of Milan Kundera ("im reading his books now days/and i like him alot./and ppl were like 'REALLY? U LIKE MILAN KUNDERA?'/like as if its EW... is it????/i dont get it/i love his style of writing, very analytical and psychological/very reasonable, erotic, interesting, kind of grotesque, kind of stereotyping.../but very very... true/i really like studying human behavior and how certain people's mind work/it is kind of like.. little things when you see how someone behaves/very slight things/where u can tell/'oh he/she has unresolved issues with his mother'/'oh that person , sexual deviant!'/'oh that person probably goes home and revises their conversation/e.g. im going to say this when i introduce myself at dinner today'") at all is impressive; all the more so that the unfolding record of her frazzled mind is so consistently interesting. Girl is whip-smart and funny.

Elyse Sewell's LiveJournal
Funny And Interesting (Cameron Russell's blog)
Big Long Open Gash (Sophie Ward's blog)
Oh So Coco (Coco Rocha's blog)
I Like To Fork Myself (Daul Kim's blog)

Ziff's film, Picture Me, premiered at the Gen Art film festival in New York on Monday — and after watching this trailer, I am dying to see it. Ziff's background — her parents are an NYU neurobiologist and a lawyer, and Ziff herself went to high school at Manhattan's tony Dalton school — made her an unusual fit in a profession that, as she explains, makes you feel like "a living doll." And, as she worked in the industry, she began to question its practices: from the probably harmful (in an interview with the Daily Beast, Ziff relates working with a model so young that she was playing with a coloring book) to the abstractly interesting (there's no better demonstration of the power dynamic of the photographer/model relationship than the footage, in the trailer, of Ziff turning her video camera on a backstage lensman who is shooting her). This is a girl who's clearly read her Sontag. (It must have been a struggle to find the time. A brief summary of her very successful career requires mention of everything from Chanel couture and Balenciaga shows, to Delias catalogs, and ads for DKNY and the Gap.)

In Picture Me, Ziff and her co-director, Ole Schell, get models like Diana Dondoe, Tanya Dziahileva, Olga Scherer, Lisa Cant, and Missy Rayder, as well as industry eminences grises like Gilles Bensimon, on tape discussing everything from models' weight (how heartbreaking it is to hear Rayder talking about how she always felt her hips made her stand out from the other girls in the runway lineup) to the realities of becoming the family breadwinner at the ripe old age of 14. (When Schell asks Dziahileva, who is from Belarus, to describe her family's situation prior to her modeling career, she shakes her head no, presumably from shame at her former poverty.) The full film promises to show models addressing topics like agency debt and our vulnerability to the predators who mar the industry. (Topics which are of course close to my heart.)

It helps to know that, for Ziff at least, this is a story with a happy ending. She earned enough money to buy a place of her own in the West Village, and now, at 26, she's studying English and Fine Arts at Columbia. (You can read her contributions to the university paper, the Spectator.)

It's great that a model thought to create the opportunity to talk back to an industry that sometimes leaves you feeling like a professional mute.

The Ugly Truth About Models [The Daily Beast]
Picture Me [Facebook]
Interview With Sara Ziff, Then Aged 19 [ZoneZero]