Alices Poses The Model

 Model: Bonsoir!

Alice: Parlez-vous français?

Model: En peu.

Alice: Uh, nope, that’s all I had. Merci, though.

You're called the Model. Are you really a model or do you just like to build model airplanes or ships in jars or whatever?

Model: I'm not currently a model, but I did work as a model in one of my previous incarnations. That is, pre-spawn.

Alice: So, are we talking Sears catalogue or Calvin Klein billboards? And please don’t be afraid to be totally arrogant; Chance was.

Model: The Model is not secretly Giselle Bundchen or Kate Moss, so not quite Calvin Klein billboards in Times Square. But I was in Italian Vogue, a Marc Jacobs runway show, stuff like that. My ex-husband did the Armani campaign and really was on the billboards in Times Square, so my career was always totally inferior in comparison.

Alice: And you have two kids with him right? They must be so adorable.

Model: Correct: two adorable spawn.

Alice: And now one million questions about modeling: first and foremost was an eating order required?

Model: I was already starting with the metabolism of a 16-year-old—since I was one—so on top of that I would navigate the streets and public transport systems of foreign cities all day long carrying a giant bag, in heels, and eat like, a panini for lunch and a little bowl of pasta for dinner. I would have dwindled away to nothing if I hadn’t the sense to fill in my calories by drinking all night.

Alice: In other words, you have the life experience of matron but are only in your very early twenties?

Model: Something like that.

Alice: Growing up fast: good thing or bad thing?

Model: I'm happy with my lot. I have friends my age who are still partying and nowhere near settling down. But most of my friends who are in the same place in life as I am have a good decade or so on me. It's been like that for so long, I can't imagine things being any other way.

Alice: Favorite modeling moment?

Model: I'm sure I should come up with something highbrow and glamorous, but I’m going with getting paid to throw french fries at Mary Tyler Moore on live TV while standing next to Bruce Vilanch.

Alice: Worst modeling moment?

Model: I once did a shoot in the foothills of Mt. Fuji in the winter, with strep throat, in a short-sleeved shirt, skirt, and sandals. It’s no trip on a runway, and it’s not terribly embarrassing, but I almost died of goosebumps.

Alice: So are goose bumps airbrushed or what?

Model: Sure. What isn't?

Alice: You've traveled quite a bit. Have you ever landed in another country and felt like you were home?

Model: I got pretty comfortable with Tokyo, but there's no place like home (click, click, click).

Alice: What city or country do you hope you never have to return to?

Model: Easy: Milan. I'm not sure the smell of Italian dog feces and body odor will ever leave my memory. I’ll happily go anywhere else in Italy, but Milan can bite me.

Alice: Do you anticipate any world traveling with kids in tow? If so, will you be wearing heels?

Model: I’ll take the kids anywhere. And I wear heels to the grocery store. Because Rex, my significant other, is a very tall, very thin guy, so I do what I can to match.

Alice: Rex’s tall without heels though?

Model: 6'7" in his socks.

Alice: No he's not! That is freakishly tall. Jack-and-the-beanstalk tall.

Model: He's never heard that before. Ever.

Alice: Please tell him I said so. He needs to hear it. Tell me what he says.

Model: He says he actually had no idea he was anything but average until this very moment. But thanks for making him feel like a circus freak. He's going to go cry now.

Alice: Or he could just take up basketball.

Model: Also a completely new idea.

Alice:  I'll text you my address so he can send me a thank you note.

Okay, I can't resist. I have one more thing for Rex: can he see over most bathroom stalls?

Model: He says, "I can see over ALL bathroom stalls. I just don't look." Same goes for dressing rooms.

Alice: I might need to devote an entire interview to him because I have a lot of questions about being that tall. Like "where do you shop?” And "have you measured your torso and your legs"?

Model: Alice, you’re fixating. I was warned about this.

Alice: Right. So, please tell us all the secret of high heels.

Model: There's no real secret other than getting a comfortable pair. I have heels I can wear all day and do cartwheels in no problem, and I have heels that I can't stand in for 30 seconds without getting a blister and fainting. You just have to be selective.

Alice: That’s not the answer I was hoping for. What do you do when it comes to jeans? I'm dying to know.

Model: I don't wear jeans.

Alice: W-w-w-w-w-whhaaaat? Get out. And Rex doesn't look over the bathroom stalls?

Model: I wear dresses. Almost exclusively. With leggings or stockings in the winter. Sometimes skirts and blouses.

Alice: Now I'm speechless. Is it possible to do that in freezing climates?

Model: I wouldn't know. I try to only live in temperate zones.

Alice: I like you less and less.

Did you ever get to keep the clothes you modeled?

Model: Mostly no, but it did happen on occasion. Now I mostly shop thrift. Which is why I'm often found in really bizarre prints.

Alice: I take back not liking you.

Polly always says she’d like to be more like you. Any idea why?

Model: She told me it’s because she would never (could never, really) just wake up and decide to go on a cross-country road trip alone—with a two-year-old—and leave that same afternoon. I can and have, plenty of times. I usually wing it pretty well.

Alice: Polly mentioned something about a puking dog, too? Was that real?

Model: Once there was a puking dog. And it was fine. We all had a great time anyway, dog included.

Alice: Okay, so I can conclude that screaming kids is something you handle well. What’s your trick? And don't tell me your kids don't scream.

Model: They scream. They just don't scream as much in the car.

Alice: You stopped attending school in sixth grade, just left and never went back. But now you’re heading toward becoming a doctor, aren’t you?

Model: That’s the general direction. I faded out of school in sixth grade and ended up pursuing modeling, so first I had to go back and get a GED. Now I'm a sophomore pre-med. We'll see. I reserve the right to change my plans at any time.

Alice: So give us one sentence to sum up why dropping out of middle school isn't the end of the world.

Model: Middle school is the deepest pit of hell. There's also something to be said for not being burnt out. Sorry, two sentences. Dropping out didn't teach me any respect for rules. You know, this would be a good place for you to segue Shalom Auslander into the interview—

Alice: I want to mouth kiss you with tongue for that. Did you read the book?

Model: Not yet. Books pretty much have to magically show up on my doorstep in order for me to read them these days. But thanks to your obsession, I hear that just might happen with “Foreskin’s Lament.” (Oh Bookgirl, how I love thee...)

Alice: What’s the difference between a model and a supermodel?

Model: Money. Lots of it. Models make just enough to keep traveling. Supermodels make oodles and have name recognition. And are a species that is nearly extinct.

Alice: Any advice for the young girls out there, like Chance, who want to be models?

Model: Just don't do it. Unless your looks are all you have going for you and you’re a glutton for punishment. If you have anything else going for you at all, and if you dislike punishment, you're wasting your time and talent getting into modeling. But I'm not bitter.

Comments

[The Dol]

Yeah, Polly and I still speak with wonder of the cross-country trip with the puking dog and the kids. We bow down to your spur-of-the-moment, to-hell-with-it attitude, Model. We could both learn a thing or two from you.

And I agree about middle school. It's a horrible place. However, most middle-school-aged kids are strange, smelly, awful creatures.

(And your profile pic is adorable! Do you ever have a bad hair day? Don't answer that, please. I don't want to know.)

[Polly Poppins]

@Dol, I think for the sake of friendship, we have to assume The Model has the occasional bad hair day. Even if we never see it. For the sake of the friendship.

@Model, I love looking at your modeling pictures. I like the whole stylist thing, where you look like five hundred devastatingly beautiful women who share a passing resemblance but are not at all the same. That's fabulous.

@Chance, does this change your mind about modeling?

[Chance]

Alice...nice job again.
@To the Model...I take back most of the mean things I have said about models. I was just bitter after the three dates with a J.C.Penny model didn't end in a private photo shoot.
@Polly the only modeling I could do is for penile implant surgery...the before pictures.

[Diosa]

The traveling sounds very cool. I was born with the metabolism of a sedentary eighty-year-old, so very jealous. I don't use it as an excuse, though, and I've learned to flaunt my curves.

Even if we ignore weight, I'm way too short to be a model. Even the show Tara did for short girls, I'm too short to qualify. Blackstone is 6'3", a full foot, actually a bit more, taller than me. I'd feel like a midget next to someone 6'7". Yikes!

[Polly]

@all, I'm sure Chance was kidding. Please ignore that last comment, especially if you were considering dating him (this means Bookgirl).

[Pandora]

Am I the only one who absolutely loved middle school and most of high school? Don't get me wrong, I would never go back to it, but I enjoyed my days of youth.

I still have dreams of traveling within the next couple of years. I want to meet random men, have a suntan, a pizza and a bottle of wine.

@Diosa, I've come to the realization that I love being short. People can easily pick you up and it's easier to date shorter guys.

[Kit]

I have chosen to forget the few memories of middle school I didn't simply, reflexively repress. Except for the single memory of my inexplicably crying in science class, which stands as a reminder of why the rest is best left submerged. (Well, there may be a few other memories, but I'm pretending otherwise. Stubborn brain!)

[Bookgirl]

Model, You were way easier to like when you were just hypothetically pretty, before I saw your photo and realized that you're actually freaking gorgeous...

Chance, You're ruining my fantasies here... And I have a very active imagination.

[The Model]

@Bookgirl, if it's any consolation, I'm completely hideous from the bridge of my nose down.

@Dol, I do have bad hair days. I went to the salon a couple days ago and they gave me the worst blow dry ever. I wished I had a hat to wear home.

@Polly, isn't it bizarre how different a person can look in different pictures? It really depends so much on the photographer and the angle (and lighting and makeup and let's not forget photoshop!). Captain Armani (the ex) had a talent for always looking the same in pictures though.

@Chance, I'm not sure what you've said about models, but chances are I agree. It takes a heavy sense of irony for me to even go by "The Model" on here, because I so don't identify with it anymore.

@Diosa and Pandora, being tall is definitely not all it's cracked up to be. What's left out is one of the reasons I don't wear jeans: I can't find any that are long enough! And I'm only 5'10". For Rex, fuhgettaboutit. There aren't many places that sell pants in size 32x36.

@Kit, that's probably wise. I only went to 3 months of middle school before I dropped out, and that was more than enough! At least, I think it was. Those memories are deeply, deeply repressed.

[Polly]

I went out to coffee, wearing flats, with the Model, who was wearing platforms, and Rex who was wearing sneakers and I felt like I was their much older child while we walked to and from the table. They're pretty normal height when they sit, so that was okay, but really the walk was awkward.

[Chance]

Don't worry bookie...the bedroom, kitchen, laundry room, car, park bench, pool, swing, beach, tree fort, tent, office desk, restaurant booth (closed) airplane, fast train, seedy motel, four star hotel, are not where the problem's start.
@Polly...if they were on either side of you holding your hands...that would be awkward!

[Chance]

BTW...to The Model...your profile pic rocks my world. You have that Uma Thurman thing going on where your about to ninja me to death...way hot!

[Diosa]

I had a guy, he was probably 5'5", ask me if I would date someone shorter than me. Honestly, I've never been posed with that problem. But truth be told, I like a tall man, over 6', much to the chagrin of many a tall women who often think I'm stealing their men, or one of their men more specifically.

Mostly, I'm okay with my height, and it does have its benefits. But a couple of inches would be nice. It's not something I dwell over every time I get dressed or anything. I rarely give it much thought.

[The Model]

I have to admit I've hated on short girls with tall guys before. Iit probably makes short guys sad too. But the truth is, there are plenty of tall guys to go around. And plenty of short girls for those short guys. And then there are tall girls who don't mind guys being short. I dated a guy who was a few inches shorter than me once. That's how I learned that guys who are shorter than me are just always going to be stuck in the friend zone. Nothing I can do about it.

Last night, Rex and I went out to dinner and to a party with Rex's brother and his wife. They are exactly the same heights as us (6'7" and a little over 5'10"), and the wife and I were both wearing 4" heels. So at least with them we can feel normal. And everyone around us can feel petite. It's win/win, really.

[Bookgirl]

Chance, Wow. Good answer. Is it just me or did it suddenly get really warm in here?

[Polly]

@Model, if petite is a euphemism for squat, then yes.