Thursday, April 23, 1998
Modeling ads not what they claim
CLASSIFIEDS: Posing in Internet pics for money has serious
ramifications
This year, my final senior year at UCLA (this being my fifth
year) I decided not to work, and rather, to live off my savings
from my last summer job and focus on school and interviewing.
Seeing as how I still do not have a job after graduation, I am
starting to think that I should have just worked this year.
How discouraging that I can sum up my senior year in two
regretful words: shoulda worked.
Anyway, as my savings started to dwindle I began to peruse the
Daily Bruin classified ads in hopes of finding a job in the interim
before the offers start rolling in. You know – the offers that
would provide me with an impressive salary without much actual
work.
After deciding that I did not want to stuff envelopes in the
privacy of my own home for exorbitant sums of money, I happened
upon my dream job. "Dream job" does not really accurately describe
this opportunity for the long term; rather, it seemed to meet my
low standards in the short run.
There was an ad in the Bruin looking for lingerie models. I went
through some reservations about this type of work: what would Dad
say? What if these pictures surfaced years from now and ruined my
political career? "Excellent compensation, won’t interfere with
studies, no nudity," the ad proclaimed. I would tell Mom and Dad
that I was doing research for a column. (Note to self: do not send
this column home for their reading pleasure.)
All of my objections disappeared – as did my aspirations for a
career in politics. Sign me up, I said to myself, that’s the
ticket. I answered the ad, calling them from a pay phone in the
Public Policy building, just in case it was a cleverly disguised
vice sting operation.
I had dreams of Victoria’s Secret-like settings or actually more
like Frederick’s of Hollywood. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
Perhaps I would get to pose on a sexy velvet couch or with a
ferocious animal like a tiger.
As visions of calendars danced in my head, I chose my month of
choice. May, my birthday month, seemed a little too plain. I
decided I would like to be Miss March or Miss July (hot, hot, hot)
– much sexier, no?
I also thought I should consider changing my name. Ann did not
seem like a sexy enough name for the vixen into which I was about
to be transformed. I wanted to select something both catchy and
sexy and went through a few options.
After rejecting "Pepper" because it seemed too cute (yet spicy,
get it?), I settled on either Cinnamon (with no last name –
"Cinnamon" seemed effective enough by itself) or Lacy (Lacy Lovell
has a nice ring to it, yes?). Perhaps this could be the start of
something big for me; a number of now-famous models have posed in
Playboy and other such publications.
I could maybe aspire to be a girl of the Pac-10. To prepare for
my impending success and fame, I practiced signing my real name and
both stage names, in big loopy script with lots of Xs and Os after
it. All the models do it.
Back to the phone call. A pleasant-sounding woman answered the
phone and I told her I was responding to the ad in the Daily Bruin
for lingerie models. She explained to me that there were three
modeling options: lingerie, topless and totally nude. And once you
chose which type of modeling you wanted to do, there was no
pressure to do more. This scenario in its entirety raised some
questions for me, like why did the ad say no nudity if that was
clearly an option? But no one was going to rain on my lingerie
parade so I bravely forged on. However, things quickly went
downhill during the remainder of our conversation.
They were looking for girls for modeling on the Internet –
downloadable pictures no less! And if you were a lingerie model,
you were paid on commission off of what people ordered online. My
champagne wishes and caviar dreams quickly dissipated as I explored
the ramifications of this set of circumstances.
Of course there is no pressure to do more than you had
originally agreed to; they had your picture on the Internet. They
could easily cut and paste your head onto any kind of body they
wanted.
I imagined my friends saying, "Downloaded your picture the other
day, Ann. What exactly were you doing with that goat? Did you get
implants? When did you get that tattoo? It looked painful."
I could just envision a professor or an interviewer (read:
potential employer for a successful career) looking at me kind of
funny and asking where they knew me from. At this point, I would
either die of embarrassment or promise them that I would not tell
anyone that they were checking out college girls online. (On the
other hand, given my current situation, this type of exposure could
be an improvement.)
Furthermore, who buys lingerie online? How much could this
mysterious "commission" really be? Once someone had downloaded the
picture, they could call it up onto their monitor at leisure – and
for free, I might add.
I shudder at the thought of being some 60-year-old’s (perhaps
Woody Allen’s) screen saver. Or overhearing someone say in response
to the question, what did you do last night, "Spent a satisfying
evening with Cinnamon." I did not see how I could make the
"excellent compensation" that the ad promised with this
scenario.
Kind of ironic, don’t you think, that in a paper with a
readership comprised mostly of college students there would be ads
for women to make money with their bodies and not their minds. But
then again, who am I to judge? After all, I’m the one who
called.