It was one of those afternoons when there was nothing else to do but desperately scour Netflix for a streaming movie that wasn’t made in 1993 or released straight to DVD. It was then that I stumbled upon Picture Me, a documentary about model Sara Ziff living in “the glamour and the darker side of the high fashion industry,” or so the description said. A movie about the “darker side” of a successful and beautiful model’s life? I swear I heard my brain scoff a little bit. Sure, models suffer from getting their hair pulled by stylists or having to eat a salad instead of a burrito, but could it be that bad? I love fashion. I love models (despite my obvious envy of them). I can only watch so much old Dexter episodes and I refuse to watch Anaconda 2; so I watched it.
The documentary, directed by her then-boyfriend Ole Schell, spans five years of Ziff’s career. About five minutes in, she excitingly opens a check for $80,000 from one of her modeling jobs, at 19 years-old. Walking the streets of Manhattan, Ziff sees herself on a giant billboard next to, wait for it, an even bigger billboard with herself in it. I was about to turn the TV off when the movie took a turn. One after another issues come up from various interviews of people in the industry: sexual harassment at 15, debilitating exhaustion, drugs, and being deemed “too old” at 25. This isn’t a documentary about a model whining, it’s a movie about serious issues that real people (most of whom underage when they start and who just happen to be good-looking) have to face. With cameos of Karl Lagerfeld and Natalia Vodianova, this movie is a must-see for anyone whoever thought that modeling was just about putting one foot in front of the other.
Text Kristina Bravo
The documentary, directed by her then-boyfriend Ole Schell, spans five years of Ziff’s career. About five minutes in, she excitingly opens a check for $80,000 from one of her modeling jobs, at 19 years-old. Walking the streets of Manhattan, Ziff sees herself on a giant billboard next to, wait for it, an even bigger billboard with herself in it. I was about to turn the TV off when the movie took a turn. One after another issues come up from various interviews of people in the industry: sexual harassment at 15, debilitating exhaustion, drugs, and being deemed “too old” at 25. This isn’t a documentary about a model whining, it’s a movie about serious issues that real people (most of whom underage when they start and who just happen to be good-looking) have to face. With cameos of Karl Lagerfeld and Natalia Vodianova, this movie is a must-see for anyone whoever thought that modeling was just about putting one foot in front of the other.
Text Kristina Bravo
No comments:
Post a Comment