(Sorry had to remove photos)
My first ever photo-shoot: this was for Models1 to decide whether they would sign me up or not, a week after they'd spotted me at The Clothes Show Live in Birmingham. I'd just had my fifteenth birthday, and I was absolutely petrified: I look like I'm about to fall asleep, but that's just what my face does when I'm really, really scared. I was literally shaking, and my hands are together because I was trying to hide how sweaty they were from the photographer. I'm at the top of a disused factory on a window ledge and my dad is standing about four metres away, jumping up and down in excitement like an idiot. I HATED this photo when I was fifteen - my mum only just saved it from hitting the bin - but I actually think it's quite sweet now, sixteen years later. They signed me up, so I guess it did the job.
This was a shoot I did at around sixteen years old, and we were all different pieces of fruit. As soon as I walked into the room the photographer shouted "THERE she is: my little raspberry! The minute I saw you I KNEW you were my raspberry! I've never seen a person who looks more like a raspberry in my entire life!" I still have no idea what she was talking about. It's a real Gucci handbag, and also my real hair: they spent hours frizzing it up. I fell out of the changing room while I was trying to get dressed, accidentally pulled down a curtain and had a crush on the boy who was "Carrot". So if anyone is wondering if GEEK GIRL is a camp exaggeration of the real modelling world, the answer is: umm, not really.
Another "high editorial" shoot, I believe this was entitled "Monster Dolls": you can actually see the line they drew around my neck to make it seem as if I'm made of plastic. Yet again I look miserable, and this time I really was: the make-up artist had used a real, coarse fibre paintbrush to grind black shadow into the skin around my eyes, and those black ropes are tied so tightly around my hair that my scalp ached for three days afterwards. I was trying very hard not to cry, but the expression kind of works. I look like I'm sad and totally dead-eyed on purpose.
This was taken a week after I had signed with the agency because I had been "optioned" for a massive Calvin Klein campaign, and they needed polaroids to send to New York. For about three weeks - while they were deciding - I don't think I slept at all; I had to have a suitcase packed so I was ready to fly to America at short notice. Obviously, I didn't get it - it was my one and only glimpse of real modelling success - but when I wrote GEEK GIRL I was able to draw on genuine memories of how I felt at the time. I smile every time I look at this photo, because I'm so incredibly unkempt: greasy skin, hair everywhere, eyebrows everywhere, massive, pussy zit on my forehead (I remember it was a particularly painful one). I've also got my "comatose bunny" face on again.
Suffice to say I was a very bad model, and not least because I only had two facial expressions: mute terror and WOOOOHHHOOOOOOYEAAAAHHHH!!!! This is the latter. It was for a Models1 book, and everyone else in it looks like a beautiful, thoughtful fairy. They put me on a trampoline, and I was so delighted about jumping up and down I totally forgot I was supposed to be modelling as well. Obviously I was humiliated when I saw this, aged fifteen. You can see my little white socks and my knickers, and it looks like I have a mono-boob (it was actually a nude top). Still, as my mum pointed out happily afterwards: at least everything's clean.
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