Ok....so I am gonna break away from the chronological re-telling of my travel stories for a second here. To make a long story nice & concise, I have sworn off America's Next Top Model because, frankly, it has become incredibly boring to me, and the girls are just getting more & more daft & annoying. I did, however, watch last night's episode because I am a travel freak and just had to know what country they were gonna be sent to.....ends up being Barcelona, Spain. Bitches. Ha!
I watched ANTM with guilty pleasure up until this current season, much as another person would watch a train wreck, Jerry Springer, or Cops. I also loved to see what foreign markets the girls would be sent to each season since I had lived in most of them (except Capetown & Bangkok) and it was always nice to see familiar streets, buildings, etc. and watch the contestants act the role of "ugly American" to a T. My sense of humor is a bit off, okay. This season just killed it for me though when I saw the girls that were chosen to compete and for the first time ever, not a single one caught my attention as a potential "top" or even "middle" model. Caridee is a maybe, but the rest of the girls are just blah....and Melrose acts like a tweaker.
What I have to rant a bit about is that any girl expecting to enter the world of international modeling is in for a rude awakening if she expects to live in digs like the ones the girls on ANTM are set up in season after season, country after country. This new apartment the girls are set up in in Barcelona is amazing.....and completely unrealistic, but so is the entire show, so what the hell I am writing this for anyways?
Agencies provide housing for their models, yes. However, these apartments are always small, spartan and often times crammed with other girls. And depending on who your roommates are, the place can be a hovel. Pretty girls are not always clean girls. As a matter of fact, some of the most beautiful girls I have met have been the most unhygienic.....worse than a frat boy on any given day. Seriously. I walked into my apartment in Milan one day to discover a new roommate sitting on the couch completely naked and shaving her crotch onto the floor and sofa cushions. She has since become a pretty big name in the Industry so I will allow her her anonymity, but have mercy. That was disgusting.
My apartment in Hong Kong sat right on top of a McDonald's and you couldn't open the windows without being attacked by french fried steam pouring out of their vents & into our home. And this is an apartment that I shared with 7 models. 5 girls and 2 guys in a three bedroom, ONE BATH unit. One bathroom and seven models. Good God.
A huge powerhouse agency in Miami my second season there had to remove all its girls from their residence-hotel because several of the models had allegedly contracted scabies from the sheets & towels. Another friend of mine reported that she had woken up in her bed in Seoul covered in red ants. Fabulous baby.....just faboo!
Models apartments are normally old and unkempt. The agencies don't generally care about the units since they know that they're gonna get trashed anyways. Taipei was nice in that we lived in a hotel so it got maid service daily, but it was still small, had no kitchen, etc. There are no fancy furnishings and you are lucky if you get even so much as a towel rack to hang any clothes on.
I stayed at the Elite Model Management models apartment in NYC one night since I had flown in for a one day booking, and although that was one of the nicest model's apartments I had seen, I still had to endure a luke warm shower with no water pressure, and I wasn't provided with a pillow or blanket. Nice. My friend who was living in NY at the time in her agency's apartment, told me that I had it good....her unit was infested with roaches....they were even in the fridge.
One of my close friends and her roommate in Milan had to shower and use the loo by candlelight since the tiny bathroom had no electricity and no windows.....the agency didn't fix the problem for an entire month. It is totally normal to move into your new home away from home and have to clean out old food and condiments left behind by the girls who lived there before you as well as throw out 2 months worth of garbage piled high up against walls & stinking to high heaven. Like I said, pretty don't mean clean.
So when Miss Tyra presents to the television audience and many prospective models, these luxe, lofty, amazing accomodations....she is setting you up for a nice fall. Once you are an established model, clients may fly you out on location and then set you up in nice quarters. I've had clients put me up at the Four Seasons and at 5 Star resorts.....but it takes time and a lot of work to get to that point. If you end up with cheaper clients, you may be staying at a Motel 6 which is what happened to me for a booking in San Diego......feces covered toilet seat and all.
If you wanna travel, be prepared to live in a hole. If you get lucky and hook up with your own tiny studio apartment, some agencies especially in Asia provide those, then consider yourself blessed. But rememeber, you will pay for it in the end. Most models opt to stay in the overcrowded, crappier units because rent is only being advanced to you.....it eventually comes out of your earnings.
And I'm not saying that all agencies have their models live in crackhouses.....the units are just really old, as filthy as the other models living in them, and the utilities are not always reliable. And they are tiny. No posh Barcelona loft full of antiques for you! And to be honest, if you want to travel, you should do it for the love of going abroad and working in fashion. I still think it is the easiest and by far most fun way to travel. Your apartment may suck, so consider yourself warned, but if you luck out with good roommates, then you've got it made.
I've only had two crazy roommates in all my years of traveling, The German crotch shaving model and a girl from Spain who was super cool until she became strangely obsessed with one of my guy friends and then went off the deep end. I've had dirty roomies, like the nudist Aussie who never, ever showered, and the Argentinian chick who went on to move to NY and make it pretty big but who was living with a maggot filled trash can in the kitchen when I moved in. Other than that, everyone else was awesome, and that made living in a closet so much more pleasant.
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