The Shot that Launched a Thousand Trips

So, let me give you a little background on how I became a model. God, that sounds pretentious, but anything you say that includes the words "I'm a model....blah blah blah...." is gonna sound pretentious. I swear I'm not, so you are just gonna have to take my word for it.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles which basically made wanting to be an actress as natural to me as having 365 days of summer a year. I was passionate about my thespianism, did all the school plays & musicals. The whole nine yards. I never even considered being a model, and didn't pick up my first fashion magazine until I was 17. Thanks to my completely non fashion conscious upbringing, I was just not cute....or maybe cute in the way a gawky, semi androgynous teen could be cute...but that's it. Let me put it to you this way......I never got asked to Homecoming or the Prom and actually got turned down by a major crush of mine when I asked HIM to senior prom. Awesome.

So, since both of my parents gawked and practically had coronaries when I told them that I wanted to pursue acting when I graduated from high school (I swear you would have thought I told them I wanted to be a stripper) I decided to go to college and major in that other thing I was pretty good at...writing. I became an English major with minors in Spanish and German. That seemed to appease them for the time being, and I had a blast moving up to Portland, Oregon to go to school. Once I graduated, I got a job as the editor for a small, Catholic, Spanish language newspaper. It sounded great, but seeing as I am not Catholic and consider myself a liberal....I couldn't stand writing and editing articles that basically told the Hispanic population of Oregon that birth control is evil and other such offal. So I quit. I walked into the city's biggest talent agency figuring I could land some roles in local commercials and well....the rest is Peacocks on Leashes.

My agency, Q6 Model & Artist Management, kindly told me that there wasn't much by way of acting in the great metropolis of Portland, but would I at all be interested in modeling? And if so, would I be interested in traveling abroad to do so? Tough questions to answer, but after about 2 seconds I had to say yes to both. They promptly sent me to Seattle to shoot with who I still and forever will consider one of the most amazing photographers ever, Marc Von Borstel......a man who with lip gloss, natural light and a tube of mascara turned me into a real life fashion model . This is the picture that launched a thousand trips....well, maybe not a thousand, but definitely launched a thousand incredible memories in the world of fashion...



Within a month, I was sent to Taipei, Taiwan with an 8 week, five figure contract to do catalogs and magazine shoots. And that is how the story begins........

The Good, the Bad, and The Naughty

I'm finally sitting down to do this.....I'm writing my memoirs as a fashion model. There are just too many good stories to tell and too many wild pictures to share not to. And since I can't for the life of me find a literary agent to take my proposal for a book about being a "middle model", I figured why not create a blog and just dump all this goodness I have to share in it? I mean, truth be told, my attempts at finding a lit agent were half-assed at best, but who can blame me? I have a two year old son and a baby girl on the way....so I am busy & that is an understatement. I still work as a model, yes, so I guess that still makes me a legitimate "middle model" and therefore a legitimate purveyor of peeks into the workd of fashion modeling.

And if you are asking "What is a middle model?", it's just a little phrase that I've coined to describe the genre of models that I belong to. Everyone already knows what a top model is....thanks Tyra. And everyone knows at least one person who has graduated from a modeling school only to never ever book a job outside the county fair. A middle model falls somewhere in between. Middle models are fashion models who are not household names or faces but who earn a decent living working in magazine editorials, catalogs, ad campaigns, TV commercials and runway shows within the US and abroad. We travel, party, and work like rockstars but still retain our anonymity. I like to think that we have the best of both worlds.

In this blog I am going to share all of my experiences as a middle model....the good, the bad, the ugly and the naughty. I'm going to post pictures....lots of them, and not just modeling shots of myself...come on! I am not some little narcissist (although I will share some.....why not, eh?!) but pics that I took of the places that I traveled to for work, the friends that I met and the good times that ensued. I covered ground from Los Angeles, to Miami, Milan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Seoul, Milan, Tokyo, Osaka, Monaco, the Bahamas, Austria, and a few hops into New York City.....now you get to come along with me on the wild ride that was my life for the four consecutive years that I spent living out of a suitcase. I promise not to bore! I mean come on, my title is "Peacocks on Leashes".....I'll tell you the story behind this one in one of my posts to come. Sounds naughtier than it was....but it was as crazy as it sounds.

Ciao for now! Baci a tutti!