When you are a young woman working in the entertainment industry, there are certain red flags you learn to recognize in a hurry.
"I'll pick you up," is a good one. No, you won't. I'm not telling you where I live, and I'm not going anywhere I can't get myself out to and home from unassisted. You are certainly not meeting me somewhere and getting me to climb into your car to go somewhere else. "Second location" is unfortunately often synonymous with "scene of the crime".
"No assistants/chaperons/escorts." No shoot, then. I might not necessarily bring one, but if you forbid me to have one, we are not working together. If your creative process is so delicate a thing that having someone else standing in the corner holding my robe and playing sudoku on their phone blows it all to hell, then you're going to think I do an unfortunate amount of thinking and talking.
"Let's talk about ideas over drinks." Let's not. We're not friends, and this isn't a social outing. You obviously want to hire a different kind of woman. Try craigslist.
"You're a sexy lady." Being attractive in some way -- conventionally or not -- is a non-negotiable qualification for being a model. If I don't think I'm attractive I won't respond to the casting call, and if the photographer doesn't think I'm attractive they won't hire me. There is no Earthly reason to make this statement. It's right up there with 'trust me, I'm a really nice guy'. I regard it with the same suspicion I do cans whose labels feel the need to reassure me that they contain a 'food product' and countries that have to name themselves a 'Democratic Republic', because if they didn't print it on the map no one would ever guess. I have never had a photographer who said this turn out to not be skeezy. It tells me that they do not want to hire a professional model who will exchange time and expertise for some sort of tangible product. They want to hire an aspiring model who can be pressured into exchanging attention or worse for some kind of insincere emotional validation.
"I'll pick you up," is a good one. No, you won't. I'm not telling you where I live, and I'm not going anywhere I can't get myself out to and home from unassisted. You are certainly not meeting me somewhere and getting me to climb into your car to go somewhere else. "Second location" is unfortunately often synonymous with "scene of the crime".
"No assistants/chaperons/escorts." No shoot, then. I might not necessarily bring one, but if you forbid me to have one, we are not working together. If your creative process is so delicate a thing that having someone else standing in the corner holding my robe and playing sudoku on their phone blows it all to hell, then you're going to think I do an unfortunate amount of thinking and talking.
"Let's talk about ideas over drinks." Let's not. We're not friends, and this isn't a social outing. You obviously want to hire a different kind of woman. Try craigslist.
"You're a sexy lady." Being attractive in some way -- conventionally or not -- is a non-negotiable qualification for being a model. If I don't think I'm attractive I won't respond to the casting call, and if the photographer doesn't think I'm attractive they won't hire me. There is no Earthly reason to make this statement. It's right up there with 'trust me, I'm a really nice guy'. I regard it with the same suspicion I do cans whose labels feel the need to reassure me that they contain a 'food product' and countries that have to name themselves a 'Democratic Republic', because if they didn't print it on the map no one would ever guess. I have never had a photographer who said this turn out to not be skeezy. It tells me that they do not want to hire a professional model who will exchange time and expertise for some sort of tangible product. They want to hire an aspiring model who can be pressured into exchanging attention or worse for some kind of insincere emotional validation.
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