I wrote Stupid Model over time, using bits from my journals and from memory, mixing old drawings with new ones, altering and embellishing photos of my seventeen-year-old self, often with the sarcasm I felt about my body and the beauty industry, as early as the seventies. This heavily illustrated satire was published in 2015, a few years before #MeToo happened and became a life changer for women (and thus men). Had my book been published later, the context would have been entirely different, and I might have positioned it differently. While my tales of modeling were meant as a series of skits, a modern Candide of sorts, I wrote without traces of victimhood and trauma. If anything, each episode led me to a kind of crazed empowerment, from my attempted attack on Paris couturier Andre Courreges after an abusive confrontation to having my passport taken away by a controlling Sydney mogul and escaping his yacht. In today’s enlightened language many of the stories reflect sexism, assault, abuse, and even, probably, trafficking. At age 17/18 I was clueless but strong, and very independent, not least because I was abandoned for several months, when I was only three, by my mother who was grieving (now called PTSD) the sudden death of her husband/my father. Again, there are many words for this in 2023 (unresolved early childhood trauma?), but at the time I adapted and was relatively independent by the time she came back to Spain, to retrieve me. I was an autonomous teenager, a dangerous combination of self-assured and naïve. As a seventeen-year-old model, I was clueless about men and their intentions. Hence the title Stupid Model. Don’t take offense. It is meant ironically. Not least reflecting the paradoxes that are still so evident in today’s manic marketing of youthful beauty, innocence combined with sexuality, and the subsequent judgments (Comments) about these young exploited beauties: stupid, shallow, superficial, skin-deep, etc.
But find out for yourself in this serialized tale of the life of one young model, as she stumbles from one calamity to another.
Enjoy! (or not ; )
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.
Stay up-to-date
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
Join the crew
Be part of a community of people who share your interests.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
