It is great to see a revealing documentary entering the screens called Girl Model by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin who follow a life of a 13 year old model in Tokio.
The documentary brings up the issue of underage girls who are trying to fulfill their life dreams by leaving school and parents to travel to far away continents and working around the clock in harsh conditions. It also brings up a point of lack of international regulations in so called fashion industry that by some reason gets to avoid prosecution for publicizing photos of underage girls in provocative or even nude poses.
There has been many films made about the industry pitfalls, most notable, Models Inc. starring Carrie-Anne Moss, that tried to uncover problems in American modeling world such as under-eating, competitiveness and even prostitution. It was however about mature girls in the United States who work for a well established modeling agency with some sort of rights.
The documentary Gild Model, however, brings up all the bad things about modeling. And it concentrates on girls from Eastern Europe who while being beautiful, skinny and tall genetically, to advantage of modeling agency don't speak any of English or Japanese. They are controlled, put to work and in position of heavy intentional emotional distress, while agencies are collecting millions of dollars for them.
Gill Model is a first step to the issue. In fact, the reality is even harsher then showed. Just few years ago we wrote about Ruslana Korshunova, Russian model that mysteriously died by falling out of the window in New York. Because she was not an American citizen, her death was never properly investigated. It however came to light months later that she was threatened by powerful locals to offer intimate services but refused. It is unclear if she ever contacted police, but certainly shared the horror with her friends and co-workers.
I think the Girl Model documentary should be seen by all young girls who dream to become models.
No comments:
Post a Comment