Girl Model: The Truth Behind The Glamour

There’s a downside to … photos in the fashion magazines … young girls forced into virtual child labour in the modelling industry (Source: Yeo 2012, p.2 link).

There are no supermodels or Cinderellas in this sadly compelling story, just predators and the impoverished dreamers who want to trust them (Source: Weitzman 2012, np link).

[It’s] an eye-opening account of a form of human trafficking: an industry that sends pubescent European girls to Asia as wannabe models, offering meaningless contracts and no accountability (Source: Linden 2012, p.8 link).

[It] paints a grim, Dickensian portrait of the unpleasant, exploitative working conditions endured by some of the world’s most attractive people (Source: Grant 2013, p.6).

This provocative film is a lyrical exploration of youth, beauty and ambition, seen through the eyes of a conflicted American scout and a 13-year-old she discovers (Source: gpb 2020, np link).

[It] traces an extended encounter between Ashley, a 31-year-old model scout, and Nadya, a 13-year-old aspiring model in Siberia, and captures their interactions as part of an experiential story that engages audiences with sensory immediacy. [It] … interconnect[s] seemingly disparate transgressive practices in different regions of the world within a political economy of human trafficking. It … provide[s] a cinematic explanation of how and why young Russian teenagers seek fame, notoriety and income through modelling, and how modelling and fashion companies recruit, transport and exploit these teenage girls. It also demonstrates how lives can be irrevocably impacted by encounters that initially seem insignificant; the audience is drawn into an experiential narrative that confronts the everyday realities of human trafficking … . Brief encounters between young girls and model scouts become transgressive turning points that significantly redirect childhood trajectories and deliberately entrap youth within a well-organised, international trafficking industry built on predation (Source: Redmon 2017, p.365-6).

The film creates the impression that you are observing the lives of these young women more or less as they happen (Source: Boslaugh 2013, np link).

Using no narration and limited titles, …[this] gritty verite drama [opens] with a fantastically bleak shot overlooking [Novosibirsk] the Siberian city where the story begins, and then move inside where it’s warm – a modeling meat-market that draws hundreds of young Russian girls hoping to hit the big time, parading their skinny innocence around in bargain-basement bathing suits (Source: Anderson 2011, np link).

[S]couts and agencies scouring the Russian countryside to find fresh faces for the hungry Japanese market. While trends vary from year to year, the prevailing appetite is for tall, young, cute, skinny and borderline pre-pubescent (Source: Rooney, 2011, np link).

[Canadian talent scout] Ashley [Arbaugh] is a link in the supply chain that provides Siberian models to the Japanese fashion market – where a pre-adolescent, doe-eyed ‘Russian look’ is all the rage. On behalf of Noah, Russia’s largest scouting agency, she attends makeshift rural beauty pageants, where girls, usually accompanied by anxious parents hoping for better futures for their families, compete in droves for modeling contracts (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

[She] discovered and signed Nadya. She works for NOAH Models, owned by Tigran Khachatrian. He named his model agency after the biblical Noah and views his mission as saving his models ‘one by one’ like Noah saved the animals ‘two by two’ (Source: Harmonov 2013, np link).

The intriguing opening sets the scene for this less-than-wholesome unregulated meat market. A sea of blank-faced girls in swimsuits parades before a dehumanizing panel that mandates dieting even for the most sylph-like candidates (Source: Rooney, 2011, np link).

Young girls – barely teens and all legs, curtains of hair and jutting clavicles – slouch against the drab Pepto Bismol pink wall in their rural Siberia community centre. They are then weighed, prodded and measured like livestock at auction; numbers droop from their scant string bikinis to help scout Ashley Arbaugh (herself a former model) identify her favourites (Source: Atkinson 2012, np link).

This is a roomful of anxious, nearly-naked children (Fridkis, 2012, np link).

The film … opens with a series mirrors. … There’s a bunch of refractions and reflections and you don’t really know who to trust. You don’t know, as a viewer, if you can even trust what you are watching (Source: Redmon in WETA nd, np link).

The opening series of images … capture the reflections and refractions of teenage Russian girls on display for scouts to scrutinise, measure and recruit. … Hallways and rooms of mirrors reflect infinite images of teenage girls, preparing the audience for the refracted story they are about to enter and visually and sonically establishing the documentary’s larger pattern: exploration of the fusion between flesh, image and sonic environment. This sequence attempts to bring viewers inside the setting … . Images upon images bleed into each other, blurring the boundaries between real and refracted, fake and original, fiction and non-fiction. The audience is placed inside a simulacrum of images as they are challenged to interpretatively navigate and encounter the uncomfortable experiential narrative presented through ethnographic methods and cinematic techniques. As the scouts evaluate more than 200 bikini-clad girls, criticising in their presence the size of their hips, the pimples on their adolescent faces and their weight, the scene transitions to the main scout, Ashley [Arbaugh], who is eyeing and photographically examining the main character, smiling 13-year-old Nadya. Photographic images are reproduced not only in the documentary, but also by the scouts, who photograph hundreds of teenage girls’ bodies and faces to enter into their databases. These images and sounds endlessly repeat themselves throughout the documentary, creating a spectacle of disembodiment (Source: Redmon 2017, p.367)

[S]couts and agents … seiz[e] triumphantly on the most promising girls, relieved to have snagged them before anyone else. In one scene, they admire photos of a 12-year-old in panties and thigh-highs, pronouncing her ‘extraordinary’ (Source: Copeland, 2012, np link).

[This] depressing Siberian cattle call [is] where 13-year-old Nadya is ‘discovered’ (Source: Nakhnikian, 2012, np link).

Nadya Vall, [is] a shy, lanky blonde who is not entirely convinced of her own beauty. ‘I’m such a gray mouse,’ she whispers self-consciously to the camera (Source: Edelson, 2012, np link).

[She is] a self-described ‘ordinary country girl,’ who until recently shared a bed with her grandmother in the family’s small, modest house (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

{She] dreams of liberating her family from poverty with a lucrative modeling career (Source: Beck 2012a, np link).

The prepubescent and lanky girl is beautiful with wide blue eyes and blonde hair that agents tug at as they ask her to lean further into their cameras. She struts across the room in a bikini, her lithe frame teetering over high heels (Source: Beck 2012a, np link).

Nadya … catches [Ashley] Arbaugh’s eye (Source: Sauers, 2012, np link).

[She] praises [the] skeletal 13-year-old … whose youthful look she predicts will be perfect for the Japanese market. ‘She looks young, almost like a prepubescent girl’ (Source: Copeland, 2012, np link).

The reason Nadya was chosen is explained by, Ashley Arbaugh, the model scout in her statement: ‘My business in Japan you can’t be young enough and youth is beautiful there is a luminosity there is something in the skin there something innocent and that’s what my eye has been trained to see from Japan so I look at beauty and I think of young girls beautiful’ (Source: Borras 2013, np link).

Nadja … wins a prize: a trip to Tokyo (Source: Sauers, 2012, np link).

She’s then crowned with a cheap tiara in an even more depressing ceremony, which fetes her as the ‘winner’ of a modeling contract (Source: Nakhnikian, 2012, np link).

[S]he will earn a guaranteed minimum of $8,000 for two months work. Or so she is told (Source: Sauers, 2012, np link).

When she’s crowned, you hear a voice in the background of a man saying, you know, ‘Last year’s model who won … was able to buy her family a new car and to contribute to building a new home.’ So for these girls, the hundreds of them who come, it’s almost like winning the lottery (Source: Redmon in WETA nd, np link).

Nadya is as incredulous as she is excited at being chosen an ‘Elite Star’ by Ashley [Arbaugh] (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

After her discovery, Nadya and her family look forward to the money they assume she will make in Tokyo (Source: Fuller 2012, np link).

Nadya leaves school, and her hometown of Novosibirsk, setting off, unsupervised, for Tokyo, where she will share a tiny, one-room apartment with another Russian teen model (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link)

[S]he’s shipped by plane to Tokyo, not much different than a product in plastic packaging (Source: Fulton 2013, np link).

As the models arrive in Tokyo, they must make their way on their own way to their apartments with no resources other than a slip of paper (Source: Friede 2012, np).

She’s left to fend for herself and although she keeps an English-Russian dictionary close at hand, she’s unable to communicate (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link)

When her roommate Madlen, another Russian girl, arrives, we learn what would have happened to Nadya had she not been accompanied [from the airport] by the documentarian [directors Sabin and/or Redmon]: Madlen spent four hours wandering through the Tokyo subway before somebody was finally able to assist her. And Madlen even has an intermediate grasp of English; Nadya had none at the time of filming (Source: Whitefield -Madrano 2013, np link).

Her unhappy experience in Tokyo no doubt echoes that of many unworldly girls packed off to Alienation Central, without language skills, social smarts or even the most rudimentary business savvy (Source: Rooney 2011, np link).

She is eventually delivered to the care of the Switch Agency, and her dreams of a glamorous modeling career begin to unravel. The travails of Nadya and her roommate, Madlen, with whom she shares a tiny apartment and a series of photo shoots and auditions, form the heart-wrenching core of Girl Model (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

Like other girls, [Nadya]’s told to lie about her age, saying she’s 15, and is put through a grueling schedule of casting calls and rejections (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

The auditions yield some work, but the girls never receive any pay or copies of the ads that use their photos – despite being told all the while that building their portfolios is the most important thing they can do in Japan. Worst of all, beyond ferrying Nadya and others to their appointments, Switch’s care turns out to be no care at all. Left to fend for themselves, the girls, who speak neither Japanese nor English, feel increasingly lost, homesick, tired and even hungry. Because the agency charges the girls for photos and they have to pay their own way in expensive Tokyo, they also find themselves in debt. In one of Girl Model’s more chilling scenes, a Switch agent, while caught in traffic, is asked how it is that Noah, Switch and recruiters like Ashley [Arbaugh] can profit from girls who apparently don’t make money and even end up in debt. ‘From new faces I think we can’t make money,’ he says. ‘They can get their, like, experiences; that is all’ (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

A couple of scenes show the young models sobbing and homesick while on the phone to their parents, and the modelling execs all come across as slightly sleazy and exploitative. [There’s n]o violence, but there’s much sadness watching the sobbing, homesick 13-year-old models attempt to contact their families back home (Source: Chen 2012, np link).

[The filmmakers] clearly felt the ethical conflict of being exposed to Nadya’s exploitation. At one point she is finally able to call home by using one of the[ir] phones (Source: Braithwaite 2013, np link).

Nadya Vall is on the balcony of a Tokyo building, pressing a cellphone to her ear, straining through the crackly connection to hear the voice of her mother, who is back home in Siberia. The 13-year-old … breaks down in tears. Despite numerous casting calls, there has been no work and she’s broke. ‘Home,’ she says through sniffles. ‘I want to go home’ (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

Nadya’s roommate, Madlen, purposely binges in order to invoke the clause in her contract that dictates that if she gains one centimeter in her waist, hips or bust, she’ll be sent home (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

Two 13-year-old girls scavenge the kitchen – I have more cookies,’ says one, while the other scarfs down a candy bar – nearly frantic, but joyous. The innocence of that moment belies the truth of the situation: they’re alone, in Tokyo, where they were delivered from their native Russia by a modeling agency hoping one of them might become the next Big Thing. After weeks of going to casting call after casting call and getting no work – despite the agency’s promise of at least two jobs during their stay in Japan – they think to examine their contracts. Lo and behold, if they gain a centimeter in their barely pubescent bust, waist, or hips, their contracts become void. And so the junk food session begins (Source: Whitefield-Madrano 2013, np link).

[Madlen] leaves having racked up two centimeters in her waist and $2,200 in debt to Switch. When Nadya finishes her contract, she owes Switch $2,700 – a far cry from the ‘minimum’ $8,000 in earnings she was promised. Before leaving Tokyo, she finally finds a magazine with a picture of herself (her lovely face half-hidden by an oversized black wig) and purchases copies with her own meager funds (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

[Nadya and Ashley’s] stories are inextricably bound. As Nadya’s optimism about rescuing her family from financial hardship grows, her dreams contrast against Ashley’s more jaded outlook about the industry’s corrosive influence (Source: Anon 2012c, np link).

After Ashley’s [Arbaugh’s] initial discovery of Nadya, they rarely meet again (Source: Anon 2012c, np link).

When [Ashley] Arbaugh makes a brief, cheery visit to [Nadya’s]  hovel … the purse swinging on her shoulder was by designer Bottega Veneta; that one bag costs almost as much as the earnings promised to Nadya by Arbaugh’s client (Source: Atkinson, 2012 np link).

While Nadya makes the casting rounds, landing none of the ‘guaranteed’ work and racking up debt, Ashley points out the drawbacks of owning a glass house, discusses the crossover between modeling and prostitution and, most frightening, confesses her desire to have a baby (Source: Linden 2012, p.8 link).

A visit to Arbaugh’s home in Connecticut, a spacious, rambling modernist dwelling with all the warmth of a bus station, is a creepfest: A pair of baby dolls sit upright on the couch in a living room devoid of almost all other decor. Arbaugh comments that she thought it was appropriate when she bought the house to buy the dolls, too. She has an overt desire for children and an apparent inability to have them; her need is palpable and pitiful, and the doll sequence has the mind reeling (Source: Anderson 2011, np link).

Ashley appears to have a delicate but rich interior life, which is a roundabout way of saying she’s a total weirdo. At first, her sheer bizarreness seems a detour from the main plot of the film (‘I had three,’ she says of the two life-size plastic baby dolls she bought to keep herself company in the enormous house she bought with her modeling earnings, ‘but I dissected one’), culminating when the film crew comes to her bedside after she has an operation to remove fibroids and cysts filled with blonde hair that she equates to childbirth (Source: Whitefield-Madrano 2013, np link).

Ashley’s inner conflicts about her future – sharpened by [this] unexpected surgery … –  are stark testimony to the fashion industry’s economic and psychological hold on millions of people. ‘I would be happy to be four months pregnant with a healthy thing, but this is just something that’s growing for no reason,’ she says. ‘I want a baby because that’s what I am born to do’ (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

As ambivalent as she seems about the whole business, [Ashley] … keeps an odd little collection of shots of girls’ hands and feet, some apparently photographed without the subjects’ knowledge (Source: Gray 2013, np link).

[In this scene] Ashley … is shown wearing her bikini and walking into a bathroom, where she reveals her curious ‘favourite little spot’. She opens a little white rectangular container and spreads before the camera hundreds of photos of young girls’ bodies, feet and other body parts. Ashley’s images are anonymous, cut up, dissected, separated, violated. The apathy in Ashley’s discussion of the photos, and her indifference when she claims to have taken the photos without the girls’ consent, reflects her own disconnection from the modelling world in which she works. Ashley’s photography raises not only ethical and aesthetic issues, but legal ones, too. Ashley comments on the process by which she obtained her photos: ‘So this is my favourite little spot. I had these boxes made for these little mini prints. Stockings. See the hands, gestures. See. I’m trying to hide my camera under the table so they don’t know that I am photographing. Sometimes I wouldn’t photograph a girl’s face, I would just photograph her feet or her hands.’ Ashley continues to place photographs of young girls’ body parts on the floor. She picks up two separate photographs of two different girls and tries to connect the two fragments as a whole body. She comments on her efforts: ‘Sometimes I would try to find the legs. Which legs went with which body? Hey, does that work? That works. Doesn’t it? Wait. Oh no, it doesn’t work. Wait almost works. This is the same bathing suit though, look. That fits that. I just didn’t … if I had it on a tripod then I could … ‘ As her words trail off, the scene transitions into Ashley’s admission and explanation of how teenage girls come to be facilitated into prostitution (Source: Redmon 2017, p.370).

[She] seems almost vacant at times, and ignorant about the real situation into which she’s bringing these girls (Source: S, 2012, np link).

Arbaugh seems delusional about her role in their situation, and frustratingly mercurial. Something like knowing shame flickers across her face in one moment and she can’t look the camera in the eye (Source: Atkinson 2012, np link).

But in a way, her dreamy alienation is the plot: She’s so deeply ambivalent about the industry and her role in plucking girls from around the world to enter a precarious industry that she literally lives in a glass house in Connecticut, preventing her from throwing stones too far in any particular direction. ‘They can see you, but you can’t see them,’ she says. She’s talking of living in a glass-enclosed space and how it can get eerie at night, but she’s also talking of the industry that gave her the funds to buy that house in the first place (Source: Whitefield-Madrano 2013, np link).

[S]he knows the pain and suffering that she will cause [Nadya]. This is shown through a series of old videos of Ashley lamenting her time in Tokyo. It’s sadistic but the pathos is amazing (Source: Zippy 2013, np link).

Intercut with excerpts from her own video diaries as a miserable teen model in Tokyo … [Ashley] spouts an off-putting mix of self-justification and self-loathing (Source: Rooney 2011, np link).

[She] is conflicted, alternately reticent and abashed to talk about her role in the cycle. Still, she admits she was damaged by her time as a model in the industry. ‘I was the person who hated this business more than anybody, but now I’m 15 years in it,’ she explains. … [She is] the most Dickensian of the characters [in the film]. If there is a Fagin, it’s the scout with the all-American smile. Arbaugh just might be the most dangerous of them all – just as complicit, but disguised as a friendly, trustworthy female face (Source: Atkinson 2012, np link).

Arbaugh continue[s] her search for the next fresh face – this, despite having hated her own experience as a model and conflicted feelings about the industry. Arbaugh seems critical, hinting at the unscrupulous behaviour of some in the industry and noting some young recruits wind up as prostitutes. Yet she continues in a business she describes as vacuous and ‘based on nothing’ (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

The heads of the modeling agencies are no more flatteringly represented. Tigran, an ex-military man who controls the Russian supply chain, appears to have convinced himself that he is providing a valuable service to economically disadvantaged girls (Source: Rooney 2011, np link).

[He] sees his role as parallel to that of the biblical Noah (‘for me in some way this is a religious matter’), saving the girls from drowning (in poverty, presumably). He also claims the moral high ground for steering the girls away from the temptations of drug use and prostitution (his strategy includes taking young models to the morgue as a cautionary tale) (Source: Atkinson 2012, p.7 link).

[These] educational methods … are questionable to say the least. And his Japanese counterpart, the ironically named Messiah, responds to ethical issues with obstinate evasion (Source: Rooney 2011, np link).

The head of the Japanese agency, for instance, is a man who ‘loves models,’ a characterization that is allowed to lie there, an unexploded time bomb (Source: Stone 2013, p.C2 link).

Another model named Rachel tries to assign the blame for what happens to the girls who get lost in [the industry]. Is it the girls and their ambitions, or the agencies, or the magazines, or us? ‘There is no one to blame,’ she says, ‘but the whole thing is so wrong’ (Source: Stone 2013, p.C2 link).

Girl Model is a sad story with frightening undercurrents. Filmed without commentary … it comprises a bare-bones portrait of the bare-bones children who are found, used, and often discarded in … a tough business. There’s more than that, though lurking, just under surface. … Girl Model makes no accusations, but its drive-by portrait of exploitation is haunting (Source: Stone 2013, p.C2 link).

[It’s] a lyrical exploration of a world defined by glass surfaces and camera lenses, reflecting back differing versions of reality to the young women caught in their scope (Source: Anon 2012b, np, link).

[It’s] is a horror film about the worship and eventual mutilation of innocence. They only had to turn on the camera (Source: Gold 2012, np link).

[It] doesn’t aim for a redemptive finale. Ashley [Arbaugh] deems her practice ‘an addiction’ and the cyclical nature of the movie confirms that diagnosis. It ends where it began, with the introduction of another new teen recruit. The conclusion implies that the commodification of the female body is a disease with no obvious cure (Source: Kohn 2012, np link).

Girl Model re-appropriates representational space from the modelling and fashion realm, standardly delivered through reality television shows such as America’s Next Top Model, Models, Inc., Top Model, I Wanna Be a Model, The Face, Make Me a Supermodel and others (Source: Redmon 2917, p.371).

[It] puts the lie to the glamorous portrayal of modeling provided by reality television programs and the glitzy images on the covers of high-fashion magazines. Instead, this poetic film lays bare for viewers a modeling industry rife with Ashleys and Nadyas, mirror images of exploitation and uncertainty (Source: Anon 2013a, np link).

The film will, at the very least, make you wonder about who the ‘girl model’ really is the next time you open a fashion magazine or see a billboard (Source: da Silva 2012, np link).

[It’s]is essential viewing for adolescent girls who flip through fashion magazines or obsess over ‘Top Model’ without thinking about why. It’s a movie that says those who want to be like Ashley may end up like Ashley (Source: Burr 2012, np link).

It deserves to be shown to teenagers, not necessarily as a warning, but at least as an eye-opener: This is how it works, kids. And it ain’t pretty (Source: Schobert, 2012 np link).

Extras on the DVD include text biographies of the filmmakers and six bonus video clips. There’s some interesting material in the resulting videotapes. Gross, perhaps, but not out of line with a culture that treats barely pubescent girls as sex objects (Source: Boslaugh 2013, np link).

Spending four years exploring Ashley and Nadya’s world left us with a feeling of forlornness that we wanted to translate into the structure of our verité story. After we finished shooting, we set out to craft scenes that were engaging but at the same time, built toward a looming sense of dread, imitating the situation in which the subjects in Girl Model find themselves. We edited while shooting, and then hired two editors (Alan Canant and Darius Marder) to help shape the story out of 200 hours of footage. We started and ended Girl Model with the intention of documenting a story, not developing a thesis statement or exposing the practices of specific individuals or companies. To us, above all, our film is a verité narrative. That said, we do recognize that Girl Model stirs up audience emotions and begs questions of conscience, perhaps even more so than it would have if we had tried to argue a point using facts and stats (Source: Sabin & Redmond 2012, np link).

[Filmmakers] Redmon and Sabin don’t need statistics and cautionary talking heads to support a case against sending impoverished 13-year-old girls across the world to be exploited by fashion grotesques without the protection of a guardian, much less a developed sense of self. They opt instead for a story well told and let the other stuff tell itself (Source: Orange 2012, np link).

Although the title … world might suggest an industry smackdown in the familiar mode of high-documentary dudgeon, Girl Model proves unsettling in any but the usual ways (Source: Orange 2012, np link).

Thanks to the unrelenting juxtaposition of the sparse and relatively untainted Siberian landscape with the towering, industrialised metropolis of Tokyo, Japan presents the perfect backdrop for a story that explores the harsh reality of a thriving modeling industry that connects two socially and economically disparate regions. Following the complex supply chain between Siberia, Japan and the US, … Girl Model (2011) tells its story through the eyes of former model-turn talent scout, Ashley Arbaugh and 13-year-old Siberian model Nadya (Source: Smith 2012, np link).

The radiant sadness of its two subjects – one a soulfully impassive stripling [Nadya], one a symmetrical husk [Ashey Arbaugh] – forms the center of Girl Model (Source: Orange 2012, np link).

By pairing Nadya and Ashley [Arbaugh] in juxtaposition on opposite ends of the business, we see not only why girls want to be in the business, but why seemingly every adult working in the business acknowledges what they are doing is wrong though they continue to take part (Source: Smith 2012, np link).

Ashley’s self-imposed isolation make her an interesting counterpoint to Nadya, who gives the film a clear protagonist and a story arc as an innocent thrust into a system trying to exploit her at every turn. But whether Ashley is an antagonist was what I couldn’t stop thinking about as the film ended, as Sabin and Redmon allow her moral ambiguity to set the tone for the film (Source: Saito 2012, np link).

The film explores subjects such as isolation and vulnerability. Was this intentional or a reflection of reality? [Sabin:] The isolation was something we saw early on when Nadya got to Japan and we wanted to contrast that with her experience in Russia where she had a support system, family and school. There were specific choices we made to bring out the feeling of isolation because that was something that really stood out to us. That’s why we chose the color palette that we chose with Russia and Japan (Source: theculturalomnivore 2013, np link).

There is no glamour in this film; a low-key observational approach, keeps judgement and hard-hitting shock tactics at arms length (Source: Stevens 2012, np link).

The filmmakers stay back, observing, for a restrained, intimate and poignant result (Source: Crocker 2012, np link).

The most amazing thing about Girl Model … is the level of access the filmmakers achieved to people on the inside of the Siberia-to-Tokyo modeling pipeline. … The cinematography in Girl Model is workmanlike – mostly handheld shots with straightforward framing – but it gets the job done. In fact, the modesty of the film’s technical means is one of its strengths, as it creates the impression that you are observing the lives of these young women more or less as they happen. Although outrageous things happen in Girl Model, the film itself maintains an even keel, and Redmond and Sabin pay their viewers the compliment of assuming they don’t need to be told how to feel about each incident, but can observe and judge for themselves (Source: Boslaugh 2013, np link).

‘Girl Model’ isn’t judgmental, except by implication (Source: Anderson 2011, np link).

[It] cracks that shiny facade by revealing the hairline fractures through which objectification, recruitment, transport and exploitation occur (Source: Redmon 2017, p.370).

[Its] crafting of aesthetic knowledge immerses the audience in these uncomfortable situations of sensuousness and spectacle … The film practices documentary and cinematic Verstehen by immersing viewers directly within the troublesome encounters faced by young girls; this immersion, in turn, allows viewers to perceive and sense the situation from the models’ perspective. The audience’s understanding … is thus situated within an ethics that creates a direct connection between audience empathy and the social and political conditions that give rise to harm (Source: Redmon 2017, p.367).

[It] is structured in a fascinating way. Although we follow Nadya’s journey in being a new face, her story is coupled with Ashley’s self-awareness of the business. Ashely being a former model, she is able to provide real insight as to how plenty of modeling agencies manage to sustain themselves. Also, she tells us how she feels about being a part of a parasitic cycle. It is most interesting that she does not feel passionate about her job, labeling it as having little to no importance, but decides not to walk away from it because she values the freedom of not having a nine-to-five job. The videos of her as an eighteen-year-old model in 1999 are both sad and haunting. But Ashley is no mentor. What makes watching her more compelling is the undercurrent of her narcissism. She says she cares about the girls but finds it difficult to put into words as to what extent. Upon looking closely, if she really cares as much as she says she is, she would have focused more on the issue like having a conversation with the audience – some probably interested in modeling – on how to play the game of being a new model in an agency. Instead, we get a tour of her spacious home. Watching Nadya alone and trying to make her mark in a foreign country is scary. The tension is amplified when there is just silence in between new developments, the lack of soundtrack and score underlining the emptiness of the so-called modeling career. Nadya is like a seed that is planted in a desert. She waits and waits while nothing much happens other than the fact that her debt to the modeling agency is on the rise. Despite her situation becoming increasingly hopeless, we root for her anyway because she just wants to provide a better life for her family. ‘Girl Model’ strips away the glitter, the make-up, and the photoshop (Source: Patrick 2013, np link).

How did the story come to you, or how did you first find out about Siberian girls modelling in Japan? Ashley [Sabin]:This is the first time we’ve made a film where the idea came to us from the main subject. I attended Pratt Institute with Ashley Arbaugh where we both studied Art History. I remembered her because she was frequently gone on casting trips and afterwards would ask me for the notes to our ‘Chemistry of Art’ class. Years later, Ashley saw a couple of our films when they screened at MoMA and got in touch to suggest that a film about her work scouting young girls to be sent overseas to model would make an interesting documentary (Source: Anon 2012a, np link).

[She] approached us with the idea of making a film … about modeling and prostitution and the foggy line between the two.  After a year of discussion and trying to figure out what story we wanted to tell, we decided to make the film largely in part because of her (Source: Sabin in theculturalomnivore 2013, np link).

In a way, I think, Ashley Arbagh scouted us, in a similar way she scouts there girls. She said she’d been following our work for two or three years. She said she’d seem Mardi Gras: Made In China [see our page on this movie here] and she watched Kamp Katrina and Intimidad at the Museum of Modern Art. And then, one day, after a screening, she was standing there waiting for us. And se said ‘Listen, I have this idea for a story. I want to tell you about it’ (Source: Redmon in WETA nd, np link).

She introduced us to the concept of finding young girls from Siberia and sending them to Japan for modelling assignments (Source: Sabin in Radhakrishan 2011, np link).

When she told us about it, we had deep reservations. And then she handed us a stack of DVDs. And on those DVDs there were hundreds and hundreds of girls, teenagers, in Russia being filmed. But you don’t know exactly who’s filming. All you can hear is Russian language and the girls’ sizes, their ages and sometimes their phone numbers. And then she said ‘This is what I do’. And then we took it from there (Source: Redmon in WETA nd, np link).

We were wary at first, but after hours of long conversations, we decided that there really was something to the story and so decided to try and make it work (Source: Sabin in Anon 2012a, np link).

After a year of discussion and trying to figure out what story we wanted to tell, we decided to make the film largely in part because of her (Source: Sabin in theculturalomnivore 2013, np link).

[Redmon]: The process of making Girl Model was like jumping down a rabbit hole. We knew that we would be brought to some very dark places, but we didn’t know who would bring us there, or where they would be. This tension of not knowing is how we setup the framework of the story. The audience experiences this labyrinth the same way we did – and the same way the young girls do in the film (Source: Anon 2012a, np link).

[Sabin:] What we saw in Siberia was interesting with hundreds of young girls in their early teens lining up for evaluation. That was the starting point. After Ashley finalised a few young girls, we went back to Siberia to find their families and understand why these girls chose to leave their small towns. And that led us to Japan, their difficulties and their reality of living alone for the first time when they are just 13. How did you manage to penetrate the fashion industry, which is notoriously secretive? [Sabin:] We experienced that during Paris Fashion Week when they said: ‘You are not Italian Vogue, we don’t care about you.’ Our access point was the model scout Ashley and the modelling agency in Russia called Nova Models. During the making of the documentary, we realised that Ashley was an interesting character. She is conflicted yet in denial. On one hand, she feels a certain degree of guilt about what she is doing to these girls. At the same, she also profits from it. That duality was complex and we tried to capture that in the documentary (Source: Sabin in Radhakrishan 2011, np link).

Did you predict the girls would not find success in their dream during the course of the film, and at what point? [Sabin:]: We had doubts, but Ashley kept stressing that in Japan the girls make money. Our first point of concern occurred when we read the contract. It was in English and Japanese, yet we were told the local agency translated it to Nadya. Nadya’s mother insisted that she would bring home $8,000US. However, in the fine print of the contract it read, ‘…after costs were deducted …’ and ‘… this contract can be altered any time by Switch.’ These examples were two red flags. When we arrived at the airport in Japan, no-one from the agency picked up Nadya (and the same thing happened to Madlen). We realised that the girls’ dreams were about to be met with a harsh reality of the modelling business: a desire to earn profit from female youth. Did you research previous character’s stories (other models from previous years) before getting into production? If so what were your findings? [Redmon:]: Making Girl Model was like entering a house of mirrors and looking at the different distortions of reality. We had moments of clarity, such as when we met Rachel who introduced us to other models (Source: Anon 2012a, np link).

[Sabin:] We were dealing with minors going into situations where we as adults have no idea what is going to happen … At what point do you turn off the camera? At what point do you try to help her (Source: Edelson 2012, p.10 link)?

You could have challenged Ashley… [Arbaugh’s] attitude towards the girls, and her career. Were you ever tempted to? Ashley [Sabin]: We set up the story to leave ourselves out as much as possible. … we challenged Ashley numerous times, but we decided to let each character be who they are. An audience may experience frustration with this choice, but we believe it makes for a stronger responsive experience. Do you think the unfolding events with the girls, after an unsuccessful modelling prospect, would have been any different whist in Japan if the camera hadn’t been there? David: I would think that cameras would have had the opposite effect: it helped protect Nadya. I would imagine the cameras put pressure on the situation for everything to appear like it is a well-oiled machine. … I think Nadya’s age made the entire situation very difficult. We were the adults and she looked to us for support when people in the modelling industry wouldn’t assist. From time to time, when the situation demanded it, we stepped in to provide guidance, although none of these experiences are in the film. Frankly, though, I don’t know what she would have done or how she would have navigated her complications without at least a little bit of our help. … Ashley: Additionally, the language barrier made the situation more complicated for everyone. For instance, when Nadya first arrived at the airport in Tokyo, she was expected to find her way to the agency on her own, with just an address on a slip of paper. She didn’t speak the language, didn’t know how to get there, and didn’t know her rights. She didn’t know who to ask or where to turn, and hadn’t ever travelled abroad. Had we not intervened to help her find the way, she would have become exasperated, completely lost in Tokyo and probably would have lost all trust in us. It was one of the rare times we decided to intervene (Anon 2012a, np link).

Is [Ashley Arbaugh] happy with the documentary? [Sabin:] No. It’s always tricky when you are filming someone as their life is happening. When a camera documents your day, it throws up different points of view and realities. Ashley didn’t really understand the film and said that it doesn’t make any sense. Regarding her being involved in the editing process, she only asked us to make a few changes in the name of agencies. We obliged because it did not alter the impact of the story (Source: Radhakrishan 2011, np link).

The directors of Girl Model have said in an interview they are surprised by the media’s characterization of their documentary as an exposé, having intended it as a study of two characters whose parallel lives intersect only in the moment of scouting (Source: Taylor, K. 2012, np link).

[Sabin:] It’s really about an audience feeling deeply conflicted, walking away from the film with questions … It’s not to slam the fashion industry. It’s more about inviting a participatory space to have a conversation (Source: Plelan 2012a, np link).

[Sabin:] We hope people walk away and question what’s behind the images we see every day, whether it’s on a billboard or in a magazine (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

Girl Model’s circulation on iTunes, Netflix, the BBC, PBS, ARTE, news stations and numerous other outlets has amplified the ambiguities inherent in the film’s perspective: is it marking, holding accountable or promoting the activities depicted (Source: Redmon 2017, p.368-9)?

[W]ill an audience interpret the film as an explanation of how scouts and the modelling industry exploit the vulnerability of young girls? Will [it] trouble the conscience and provoke an ethical response? Or will the fragmented images of young girls be seen as aesthetic art that creates affective, fascist and/or predatory desire, thereby reinforcing the very troublesome behaviours the documentary attempts to critique and highlight (Source: Redmon 2017, p.369)?

[I]t might do all or none of the following: fascinate and humiliate, punish and shame, fetishise and create fascist desire in a field of power. The interpretive possibilities and reactions available to audiences are endless (Source: Redmon 2017, p.368-9).

In the case of Girl Model, these angles are many and diverse, encompassing the experiences of the scouts, the teenage girls, the filmmakers, the owners of the modelling companies, the audiences who encounter these experiences and the readers who encounter textual communiques on the topic of the film. Audiences are brought into experiential scenes of transgression and encouraged to connect those scenes as interdependent events rather than isolated actions in fixed time. Audiences, in turn, add their own interpretation to the meanings and experiences of the sensory narrative through their embodied encounters with it (Source: Redmon 2017, p.371).

Whether the filmmaker’s ‘intention’ meets the audience’s ‘reception’ is ambiguous … Does an audience see, hear and interpret the film in the manner the filmmaker intended (Source: Redmon 2017, p.368)?

… uncomfortable, eerie, and saddening … dark and twisted … a haunting film that sticks with you whether you want it to or not (Source: Almachar 2012, np link).

This brutally direct documentary inspires anger and anguish in equal measure (Source: Brunson 2012, np link).

[It’s] a difficult documentary to watch. It’s cringe-inducing to see how these beautiful girls – every one of them – are picked apart for perceived imperfections. Every person involved in the modeling industry in this movie comes across as a collaborator or perpetrator of a corrupt, soul-sucking enterprise that damages the young women involved in it (Source: Anon 2012e, np link).

Girl Model is, quite possibly, the most depressing piece of television that you will see this year (Source: Bloom 2012, p.14 link).

I truly felt the dreamy nightmares of this film (Source: Zippy 2013, np link).

This is the sort of film you should see at the cinema because owning the DVD could make you look like a paedophile (Source: Kermode 2012, np link).

Girl Model is a sad and at times thoughtful exploration of the modeling industry – but one that occasionally verges on the lightweight side (Source: Stevens 2012, np link).

[It’s like y]ou’ve been reading a book, and your favourite chracter died about halfway through, but you’re convinced that he / she / it is not actually dead and will come back at the end of the book. Then they don’t. You sit there, having finished the book, staring at the last page and thinking What just happened to me? Why did I deceive myself for so long? Why is the world so awful? That’s the effect that Girl Model had on me (Source: Nesbitt 2013, np link).

Nadya Vall … is the single most mature voice in all of ‘Girl Model.’ By comparison, most of the adults in this disturbing rap against the global modeling pipeline behave like deluded apologists for a system that feeds on the young (Source: Biancolli 2012, np link).

It just killed me when Nadya’s mother asked her on the phone what she was eating and Nadya said she had no money to buy food (Source: Stirchley 2015a, np link).

I wanted to give Nadia a hug, because I felt her pain of not knowing what she should be doing (Source: DisturbedPixie 2013, np link).

Beth: I remember being almost nauseated by the number of moving images reflected in the mirrors in the beginning scene, and again when Ashley [Arbaugh] was traveling on the train and there was a little bit of sun that is shining brightly on one spot of her face. There were certain parts of the movie that were nauseating. I think the general effect that the film is trying to accomplish is that this industry seems beautiful – these women in the mirrors are beautiful – but that the impression of all of it together is nauseating. Kelsey: And they’re not even women. Some of the girls areonly twelve years old. Michelle: In the first scene, I was struck by how the industry dehumanized the girls. They were herded like animals, and the way the modeling scouts evaluated the girls’ physical appearances and discussed their flaws right in front of them reminded me of livestock judging (Source: Huang et al 2102, p. 11 link).

You know this doc about skinny girls recruited as models from Siberia isn’t going to be a happy experience when images of teens queueing up at auditions, shivering and half-naked, remind you of nothing less than footage from concentration camps (Source: Calhoun 2012, p.67 link).

I had to turn it off after [the] camera peered around the room [at the beginning]. It reminded me of a lineup of women on their way to the gas chamber in a concentration camp. That’s the thought I got; I don’t know about you. Sad, Gaunt, Afraid of their Future (Source: craig 2012, np link).

Despite some very shoddy camera work, Girl Model manages to engrossingly expose some disgusting truths about the youth modeling industry (Source: Smith 2012, np link).

[T]here are some major flaws with the documentary. Editing is bad, really bad. Even as the stories are compelling, they were merged into a documentary in a way that gives the impression of an unfinished job. I know this is a low-budget production, but this is not about money, but a rough editing job that compromises the viewer experience greatly. P.O.V. shooting might work great, but it does require good editing afterward (Source: eurograd 2014, np link).

[It’s] a scrappy looking film, parts of it apparently shot undercover, much shot in haste. … In a way, its roughness serves it well, challenging the popular image of glamour and gloss and minimising the sexualisation of its young subjects. It successfully shows us vulnerability and despair without fetishising it the way conventional Hollywood narratives have done. It is honest and ugly (Source: Kermode 2012, np link).

One of the most difficult tasks for a critic is to review content that is morally repugnant. Watching Girl Model … it is hard to know whether to applaud directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin for exposing the underside of the fashion business – or demand they abandon their documentarian stance and rescue young Nadya on the spot (Source: Taylor, K. 2012, np link).

No matter how anyone tries, you can not justify someone so young in such a cutthroat, cruel business that routinely disposes of its models like used cat litter (Source: tony 2012, np).

They are commodities. They are easily replaceable. They are a renewable resource, you might say (Source: Dowling 2012, np link).

It’s nothing more than a glorified meat contest. It’s sad, and it should be illegal (Source: frank12 2012, np link).

Does this seem a bit like human trafficking to you? It does to me, and even though none of these girls are taken by physical force, they are lied to and manipulated into an unfair agreement (Source: Almachar 2012, np link).

There are many people in the movie who rationalize what they’re doing. One woman says that nobody can be blamed for this systematic exploitation. A man says that it’s good to get the girls as young as possible, because the younger they are, the less likely they will be to fall prey to a rich guy who wants them for sex. But it all comes back to Ashley [Arbaugh], who seems completely incapable of self-awareness and yet has these little moments of clarity where she can (sort of) admit that she is perpetuating the cycle of abuse and exploitation that made her a tragic case in the first place (Source: ericbollman 2013, link).

[The e]arly video diaries from her own modeling days hint that [her] desire to self-document may have led to her participation in the documentary, underlining a less than altruistic motive to let cameras in. Intended or not, it felt like an incredible metaphor for a world built on images that don’t represent the reality behind them (Source: Saito 2012, np link).

On many levels, this is a movie about delusions. Nadya and [her flatmate in Tokyo] Madlen are deluded into thinking they will make it big in Japan, just as their family believe their daughters will be able to lift them out of poverty. The man who runs the scouting agency that discovers Nadya fancies himself to be something of a savior. ‘I am trying to save all these young girls,’ he says with a perfectly straight face, right after telling Ashley [Arbaugh] that he sometimes takes the models to a St. Petersburg morgue in order to impress upon them the dangers of drug abuse. And Ashley herself seems to fight an ongoing battle to become more delusional, to not see or to ignore the truths of the industry she supports and feeds (Source: Fulton 2013, np link).

[Ashley Arbaugh] knows what Nadya does not, which is that most of the models will never get any significant amount of paying work, and will return home owing thousands of dollars borrowed from Switch. Even worse, some of them will become involved in prostitution – one profession in which where there’s always a market for leggy young blondes – as a means to pay back their debt (Source: Boslaugh 2013, np link).

I would say that the darkest parts of the film involve Ashley [Arbaugh] (Source: Almachar 2012, np link).

[She’s y]et another awesome example of documentary kicking fiction’s butt in the creation of monstrous characters (Source: hello-310-626610 2012, np link).

[T]he emotional isolation of the brittle scout Ashley [Arbaugh], a vision of Nadya’s future if she’s ‘lucky,’ made me want to throw myself off a cliff (Source: Taylor, E. 2012, np link).

[She] is possibly the more tragic figure. Reminiscent of Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene, she drifts through her cavernous Connecticut mansion, nonchalantly holding up the naked plastic babies that represent the number of cysts she’s had removed from her uterus (Source: Lucca 2012, np link).

I also live in Connecticut and when she described her house as a ‘little house’ I just about barfed. The house is definitely situate[d] in one of the toniest counties of Connecticut and would cost a fortune to own. It just shows how much money she has made off of these girls (Source: Stirchley 2015b, np link).

Watching Ms. Arbaugh position two baby dolls on her couch (‘I had three, but I dissected one’) and display her special box filled with snapshots of models’ appendages, the film tilts toward surreal horror (Source: Catsoulis 2012, p.9 link).

I am unsure whether they meant to include so much about her in the film originally. but that alone was odd. showing her post surgery was ODD. those dolls. NAKED BABY DOLLS. why. whyyyyyyy. and then she said she takes pictures of the models under the table so they don’t know she’s using her camera, and keeps them. she was stroking the pictures. and then playing games with them. and then just the expressions, and movements she made in the girls’ ‘apartment’ was horrific to me. there’s something so very wrong with this woman. not to mention the fact that she’s leading lambs to the slaughter for her own gain, with no shame (Source: violet_in_wonderland 2013, np link).

I think the reason she was taking pictures of hands and legs and feet was because those are specific areas of modeling. Not all models have beautiful hands or feet or legs, and that can be a niche market; shoe and hosiery ads, etc. (Source: cookiela2001 2013, np link).

but she totally said she took those pictures under the table so the models wouldn’t know (Source: violet_in_wonderland 2013, np link).

Maybe….she wanted relaxed positioning of hands, etc? I’d have to watch it again. But when I saw the pics of hands and legs, it occurred to me that IS a legitimate aspect to look at (Source: cookiela2001 2013, np link).

I think she knows she doesn’t have that anymore, what these girls have: youth, and so she is reliving her youth through these pictures of these girls legs and feet and hands. At least that is what I felt from seeing her touch the pictures. They truly seemed like her own collection of beauty (Source: DisturbedPixie 2013, np link).

Re: the scene in the girls’ apartment, CLEARLY that is going to be aaaaawkwaaaard. They can barely communicate together in English, the girls are overwhelmed, and Ashley has some guilt feelings of her own. It isn’t really that strange a scene, considering the context…and the added reality of having a film crew there (Source: cookiela2001 2013, np link).

Actually we really dont know how it really went down, since it was edited, but she clearly did not know how to empathize w/ those two little girls. She just looked uncomfortable that she was in an awkward spot and then just quietly tip toed away as those two girls burst out crying at how miserable they were. They were 13 yrs old, they were still kids… unlike her during her modellimg in japan at age 18. She was battling depression and did regretful things (probably beep partying/drugs as she insinuated), but at least she was an adult (Source: cccl350 2013, np link).

I think the point was to maybe show that the modeling industry turned her into this strange person but she seemed pretty strange already in her own videos from when she was 18. Totally creepy (Source: kpphilli 2013, np link).

For sure. She creeped me out! She is the product of what she creates in sending these young girls into such dire situations. She can’t be blamed since it happened to her, too, but she’s friggin nuts (Source: birdparade 2013, np link).

She can be blamed. Victims who become predators aren’t forgiven just because they were victims. Try to apply the same logic to murderers. She took those weird photos for her own ‘collection’, this behavior is often found in sociopaths who kill and collect trophies. She even had a custom box made to fit the photos which were non standard in their printing size … Ashley wanted to let on who she really was while hiding under the hood of vagueness. Its a cry for help from a monster. Thats the only logical explanation given that she gave the filmmakers the footage of her when she was younger, access into her creepy lifestyle (dolls/photos/surgery). (Source: sergiosilva9 2013, np link).

The audience can conclude that the industry has taken its toll on Ashley’s psyche, and she scouts strictly for money with no moral conscious about what happens to the clients (Source: Threatt 2012 np link).

Will Nadya, and the other girls like her, be able to find anyone to help them navigate this maze, or will they follow a path like Ashley’s, having learned the tricks of the labyrinth but unable to escape its lure? Indeed, it’s difficult to know who these young girls can trust and where the industry will take them’ (Source: Anon 2012c np, link).

Given that she emerges here as a whiny mess, screaming for therapy, it’s hard to imagine [she] doesn’t now regret making that call to suggest that her work might be juicy documentary fodder (Source: Rooney 2011, np link).

At times Girl Model feels like [her]’s private vanity project. (Do we need to see before-and-after footage of her stomach when she has surgery to remove the fibroid tumors that are preventing her pregnancy?) (Source: Taylor, E. 2012, np link).

Since the idea of this documentary came from batsh*t crazy Ashley Arbaugh, the directors seem to tiptoe around any wrong doing on her part, although they let her own words and videos do some fairly loud talking on her behalf. I feel like they were on the cusp of delving into more of the darker side of the business but never pushed far enough (Source: harmonov 2013, np link).

[Ashley] Arbaugh’s ambivalence was typical of insiders, says [film director Ashley] Sabin. ‘A lot of times, (people) will turn a blind eye,’ says the filmmaker. ‘They’ll see something that bothers them but because there’s no way to report it or talk about it, and because it’s a business and there’s a bottom line, they end up closing their eyes’ (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

To be fair, many industries have practices that, if they were showcased on a big screen, would draw ire or concern – just think about the food industry –  but the frankness with which [Ashley] Arbaugh and the agencies she works with assess and commoditize these children is frankly a little disturbing (Source: Sauers 2012, np link).

We’re currently in a state in America where there’s a massive hysteria over our interpretation of pedophilia and what it can be defined as on a case by case basis. Countries are taking measures to put an end to it, and yet barely legal pornography is still a high grosser on the pornography markets. Japan in particular is a place that loves young girls. It has an almost unquenchable appetite for the sexuality of girls barely in their preteens. In one scene young model Nadya is searching for her photos in a local magazine shop only to come across endless magazines of depictions of animated prepubescent girls in compromising positions, all of which are not only considered the norm for the country, but is actually in vogue with audiences (Source: Vasquez 2012, np link).

Because models are essentially selling their bodies for money, it is easy for them to accept the mindset of prostitution. A lot of times models choose to do both to earn money. It is a dark area of the business. The problem is some of these dark areas of modeling are alluded to by Ashley [Arbaugh] but never actually explored further by anyone else. It would have been nice to get answers by investigating whether prostitution or sex trafficking actually happens by confronting modeling agencies or even better, other ex-models who may have gone down that path. Without digging around for any validity, we must simply take Ashley [Arbaugh]’s word for it. Girl Model shows that there is not as much beauty in the modeling world as one might think. The opening scene will hook you in but by the end you will be left wanting more. Because many of the dark aspects of modeling were mentioned but rarely shown, the documentary suffered from telling-not-showing syndrome. Unfortunately, the majority of the runtime is spent on the surface rather than deeply exploring the topics that are brought up (Source: Jansick 2012, np link).

The film features arguably one of the strangest, yet most soothing cinematographic elements in quite sometime. The entire film seems to encapsulate or mirror a dream sequence, with very glossy atmosphere, smoothly gray and faint images, and many, many scenes with very simple yet very divine direction. However, this soft approach not only affects the film’s look but the film’s approach to the subject matter. In seventy eight minutes, Girl Model is a fine documentary, but it lacks examination on the larger scale issue at hand here and takes the passive, almost constructive criticism tactic on the modelling industry. It remains too safe, and has numerous times where anger and emotional weight could be applied, but cops out in favor of a more calm, controlled direction. Perhaps viewers would rather watch a calm, controlled look on the modelling industry, but I occasionally felt restless and a little unmoved when the film clearly could’ve invited social criticism into play, but unfortunately, took the safer, more emotionally sustained route (Source: StevePulaski 2012, np link).

[The] film doesn’t get into specifics, but there are hints that organized crime, and possibly prostitution, could be involved in these situations (Source: Johnson 2012, p.20 link).

While [the filmmakers] never actually expose anything – the slippery male characters they interview reveal little that’s overtly illicit, not even their perpetual pipeline into impoverished Russian youth – it doesn’t take a sommelier to detect the piquant bouquet of arch criminality (Source: Anderson 2011, np link).

[T]he filmmakers failed to elaborate on certain themes that were mentioned in passing … Themes like prostitution and sex trafficking, and illegal underage models. These are issues that could use some unpacking. Ashley would say something like, ‘We all know that some girls turn to prostitution (though she never even says the word), but I don’t have any first-hand evidence of that,’ and then she would move onto another topic. I think in cases like this, it is the filmmakers role to step in; if not to press Ashley further in the interview than at least to provide the audience with a statistic or something. However, the directors seemed determined to keep the narrative confined to the claustrophobic world of the characters that they were following, leaving the audience to scratch their heads and speculate (Source: mlbrown87 2012, np link).

From the outset a bias is evident: as the viewer, we are to assume the role of judge, passing judgement on the scouts and agents that can be seen promising the world to young and innocent models as they are paraded around like cattle in a market. … Nonetheless, even with such strong conviction in its angle and its take on a somewhat hidden world, a few issues arise that detract from Girl Model’s overriding impact on the audience. Throughout, it is all too apparent that the people who occupy our attention are far too aware of the camera’s presence, and are therefore inevitably guarded when being filmed. Also, the talking-head sections seem ineffectual, as the sometimes irrelevant dialogue and the ramblings of talent-scout Arbaugh add little emphasis to the overall point being made by the director. … the film’s inability to press issues further and delve deeper into its subject matter makes it somewhat of a rubber stamp (Source: Cook 2012 np, link).

Heather: Is there anything that the movie is missing or leaves you confused about? Beth: The chain of command is confusing. Who works for whom, who gets what from what business, is all really confusing. Heather: I wonder if the filmmakers do that on purpose, because you are supposed to feel as confused as the models (Source: Huang et al 2012, p.12 link).

I think it was a huge mistake not to let some of the people who are featured in the documentary to speak freely a bit, even if in the form of ‘confessionals’. It would have greatly expanded the viewer’s insight on the brutal work of … youth modeling (Source: eurograd 2014, np link).

The weakest segments are those that linger on Ashley [Arbaugh] …, who is becoming increasingly disillusioned with having to fulfil the Japanese market’s desire for ever more youthful girls. However, too much time is spent illustrating her sad, lonely life and there is also a reliance on rather clunky visual juxtapositions, highlighting the obvious disparity between Nadya and Ashley’s living situations. The somewhat pedestrian cinematography does have its moments though, particularly when the camera lingers on awkward instances such as Nadya limping in high heels or excruciating scenes of eight year old girls parading about on catwalks in backwater Siberia (Source: Stevens 2012 np, link).

Much of the time when we bemoan the youth imperative in the modeling industry, we’re bemoaning it as consumers: Isn’t it a pity that women are pushed to aspire to look like done-up 13-year-old girls from Eastern Europe? And yes, it is, of course it is. But if this documentary looks at those questions, it does so only obliquely; instead, it gives us the industry as experienced by its workers. I’d say ‘as experienced from the inside,’ except that the people who appear to be its biggest decisionmakers – the agents and clients – give only superficial (though at times painfully revealing) time to the camera (Source: Whitefield-Madrano 2013, np link).

I disagree: by remaining quiet and distant … they perfectly capture the solitary confusion, neglect, and loneliness that the girls face. The lack of action, human interaction (other than with unfriendly agency/magazine people), and the tedium of the documentary all perfectly mirror the experience the girls themselves go through. If we (adult viewers) aren’t completely clear as to who certain people are, or what exactly is going on, then we can safely assume that a 13 year old girl from Siberia, who speaks neither English nor Japanese, and has no parents to help, would not know either – and that’s the point (Source: trulyarcadia 2013, np link).

It seems adults are hell bent on exploiting young girls and the younger the better. It’s like a check list. Let’s get them parading around in next to nothing to titillate the dumb male masses – tick. Let’s give men more to look at and to **** off too – tick. Lets get the girls young enough so that they are easy to manipulate – tick. Let’s objectify these young girls and have them pose as sexual objects – tick. Let’s really get the creepy old pervs out there thinking they’re entitled to have any girl they like – tick. Let’s push the number of sexual assaults on young girls up by 80% – tick. I bet the seedy males running the p*rn industry are hanging around this event hoping to get some fresh young blood for their mainly male viewers. Funny how EVERYTHING is aimed at objectifying young girls yet young boys their age are more or less left alone. The whole thing is sick and the people running these modelling agencies should be hanging from the nearest tree for gross exploitation (Source: MAFS 2012 np, link).

When I was 13 I had a schoolfriend in the modelling business. She thrived on the attention but was clearly depressed. When she died of an overdose the local paper ran a front page story with a picture of her in a bikini, even her death sold with sex (Source: Kermode 2012, np link).

Well DM [Daily Mail] eat your heart out. This [film] is just what the fashion editiors for the DM would absolutely love. Not too old and never too young. Hmmm…. worrying and very media worthy news I see! DM is all about youth and they have got it here. This article [reviewing Girl Model and criticising the modeling industry] is hypocritical because the DM is full of the same stuff (Source: what’s up? 2012 np, link)!

Dailymail includes three such photographs of the young girls. Along with endless skimpy photos of the young teenagers Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and Courtney Stodden. And who can forget the child beauty pageant photos that dailymail claims is inappropriate but never fails to take the opportunity to publish them. Dailymail never stops with one photograph to make their point, they publish photo after photo. Why? Because much like YouTube videos, Dailymail also has the capability gather statistics on who clicks on these articles. And while the comments are filled with people who denounce these sorts of things, chances are Dailymail gets more clicks on these articles than anything else and most of the readers aren’t the type to denounce such photos. For example, Courtney Stodden’s videos on YouTube shows the statistics that most of her videos are searched for and viewed by ‘males, aged 30-50.’ I bet these Dailymail articles gets the same stats. In conclusion, shame on you, DM (Source: Cain L 2012, np link).

Girl Model doesn’t assign blame so much as it reveals the constant passing of the buck. Are we indeed to point the finger at Ashley, the model scout, whose ambivalence about the industry runs so deep that when she drops by the girls’ apartment to check in on them, she appears nearly delighted by the room’s shabbiness? Are we to point the finger at the local agent, Tigran, who “cares” so much about his charges’ welfare that he takes the rowdier ones to the morgue to view the bodies of young people who have died from drug overdoses? Are we to point the finger at Messiah, the Japanese agency head who justifies his entire business as a charity of sorts? What about the girls’ parents – Nadya’s father, who stands in the hollow frame of a new house, saying that he’ll be able to finish building it if his daughter makes a little money? Her mother, who enrolled Nadya in the modeling contest in the first place? Are we to blame ‘culture’ for wanting to dress up children as women and then make their image aspirational for all of us? Are we to blame international economics for creating a world in which it seems reasonable to send a 13-year-old to a country where she doesn’t know the alphabet, let alone the language, totally alone, in hopes of making money? Are we to blame Nadya herself for – spoiler alert – leaving and then returning to an industry that left her alone, in tears, in increasing financial debt, on a balcony overlooking a section of Tokyo she’s unable to even identify on a map (Source: Whitefield-Madrano 2013, np link)?

If anything, the documentary is more about former communist countries with large income inequalities, whose family were left behind in terms of social mobility (Source: Ab Normal 2012, np link).

Disgusting countries. Where are their parents? When we hear about child brides in some parts of the world, no one makes any reservation of admitting that the country / its culture are disgusting – but no one makes similar comments about these situations. Why not? The blame for this rests entirely upon that country, its laws, parents, and culture (Source: Anon 2012g, np link).

Scary how dumb people are. Why don’t the kids learn English? Russia has no schools? Who signs a work contract obligating you pay money? Poor people have a lot of hard experience when it comes to money, but these people haggle less over their daughter than they do over the purchase of a cabbage? I think they were assuming she’d work in a brothel, and therefore were OK with the vague details to avoid incriminating themselves further (Source: timlin-4 2014, np link).

The young … and the poor being exploited. Nothing new here. Rather a damming indictment of Putins lack-lustre, and inept ruling of his country that has left many millions of poor people far worse off now than they were when under strict Communist rule. At least then, they had jobs, homes, and some sort of social structure in place, now Russia is littered with run down slum apartments, drugs, soaring crime rates, mass unemployment and very often damn all future for the young, particularly in remote areas, and if they are poor as well. No wonder then these kids parents want them to get into a new life with money and a future … whatever it takes …. So sad (Source: Dyer 2012 np, link).

Girl Model shows that even though some models make big bucks, the global economy remains the same as it ever was: Those with nothing are seduced by the prospect of something, such that they hesitate to complain, lest they end up with less than nothing (Source Murray 2012, np link).

How can they get a work permit to allow them to work in these foreign places (Source: Kiernan 2012 np, link)?

Because the modelling industry is crossing so many different borders, and all the laws are different, there’s not a unified force that’s regulating (the industry) (Source: Sabin in Teotonio 2012, np link).

It’s really difficult for a number of reasons to regulate the industry. These girls are going across many many borders and there is no organization that is monitoring and regulating those laws. There are just now organizations coming in like Model Alliance. But there is not an overarching organization. I think until there is, there is no punishment, and you can get away with this type of treatment. Getting away with it probably means less questions being asked, the ability to make money in ways that are easier. It’s a bottom line. It’s a business. That’s why our film is not meant to point fingers at any one individual but invites people to see the complexities of the industry. Until there is some form of regulation, the cycle will continue (Source: Sabin in Beck, 2012b, np link).

I feel like there isn’t a solution to this … . At least for some issues in the modeling world (eating disorders, exploiting young girls) there are solutions. But this is just how the industry IS. There doesn’t seem to be another, viable business model (Source: Dairy Cat 2012, np link).

Yes, actually, there is another viable business model. It involves paying people fair wages and not exploiting under age girls. It happens in every other industry, why not modeling? If you want young girls, fine. Pay them fair wages, treat them with respect and dignity and don’t exploit their naivete and youth (Source: ElTejon 2012, np link).

Models working conditions and rights are finally being addressed by people in positions to actually enforce changes. And after watching this film, it’s clear that this new found awareness is coming not a moment too soon (Source: Crotty 2012, np link).

Rachel Blais, 26, a Montreal model who is featured in the film and is critical of the industry, will be at the opening night screening for a panel discussion. Blais was working in Tokyo when she met the filmmakers, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, as they followed Nadya on her journey. Since the film’s premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, Blais has begun to advocate for models’ rights. Blais, who has travelled the world as a model since age 17 and has appeared in Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, says working conditions for some young models is akin to child labour. ‘In the West, we say (child labour) is not right, yet we’re doing the same thing by putting these girls in the magazines,’ says Blais. The models work long hours without breaks, are occasionally unpaid or paid only in kind, miss or quit school and often go without parental supervision. ‘It’s a part of modelling that’s not talked about at all,’ says Blais. ‘The young girls, who are travelling the world to represent the image of the perfect woman when they’re still children’ (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

Another problem with employing 13-and 14-year-old models is that agents cannot be sure how the girl’s body will develop. If her body doesn’t develop the way it is expected to, it can lead to drastic measures on the part of the agency and the model. ‘A lot of girls have boob jobs, nose job when they’re not even 18 years old … Agencies will actually advance [money for the surgeries], but then the models are even more in debt and there’s even more pressure for them to keep up a certain physical appearance,’ Blais told us, adding that she was asked to get liposuction when she was just 18 (Source: Plelan 2012a, np link).

Why, Blais wonders, is it against the law in Canada to possess photos of scantily clad minors in provocative poses, yet it’s acceptable for similar images to appear in magazines, under the guise of fashion (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link)?

Girls should not be made up to represent women in magazines, Blais 26, said … Even the UN has conventions regarding child labour, she adds, which seem to be ignored in the case of models (Source: Friede 2012, np).

In my entire time working in the industry, I have never met a prospect who didn’t want to be a model. I’ve seen girls and guys practically beg and cry to be models, whether it’s at a modeling convention or a scouting trip. I’ve had plenty of models ask me why they aren’t working more or why they aren’t making more money. I’ve seen models who are 35 and still desperate to work as models even though their prime has passed. Why wouldn’t they just secure a regular 9-5 job with a steady paycheck? Because they want to be models. They cannot live with the thought of not being models. The younger ones get wine and dined for free, getting into clubs without waiting in line so the club owners can seem trendy. Girls whose parents don’t have two dimes to rub together are able to buy houses and cars for their parents. How many industries do you get paid $2,000 to the sky’s the limit for a day of work without being required to have any skills, expertise, or talent? No one is holding a gun to their heads forcing them to wear couture and get the red carpet rolled for them. If a girl would rather stay in her native town and live in poverty, she certainly has the prerogative to do that (Source: Khona 2012, np link).

[T]o become a model is by CHOICE … I have worked in the industry and met many models, all of which are a healthy size and seem happy to be doing what they’re doing … paid to travel the world, appear in magazines and adverts … a job most people could only dream of doing! Not to mention there are few girls doing it properly at 13. The youngest one i’ve met was 16, and plenty of times we’ve been told they aren’t available because they are at school / in a lecture. Honestly, you can be sure this film set out to show the industry in a negative light (Source: Anna 2012, np link).

These deceased models have three commonalities; death at an early age, cause of death being self-destruction and they were all models. The deaths of famous models don’t go unannounced. For others, their families decided to speak out to the press. But how many of these tragic deaths have gone unnoticed? … Natasha Duncan, United States, 2001, 21, Suicide – Elisa Bridges, United States, 2002, 28, Drug overdose – Nafisa Joseph, India, 2004, 25, Suicide – Brian Bianchini, United States, 2004, 25, Suicide – Luisel Ramos, Uruguay, 2006, 22, Anorexia nervosa – Kuljeet Randhawa, India, 2006, 30, Suicide – Ana Carolina Reston, Brazil, 2006, 21, Anorexia nervosa – Katy French, Ireland, 2007, 24, Drug overdose – Hila Elmalich, Israel, 2007, 33, Anorexia nervosa – Eliana Ramos, Uruguay, 2007, 18, Anorexia nervosa – Randy Johnston, United States, 2008, 20, Drug overdose – Hayley Marie Kohle, Canada, 2008, 26, Suicide – Ruslana Korshunova, Kazakhstan, 2008, 20, Suicide – Erin Spanevello, Canada, 2008, 21, Drug overdose – Lucy Gordon, United Kingdom, 2009, 28, Suicide – Daul Kim, South Korea, 2009, 20, Suicide – Woo Seung-yeon, South Korea, 2009, 25, Suicide – Tiffany Simelane, Swaziland, 2009, 21, Suicide – Viveka Babajee, Mauritius, 2010, 37, Suicide – Isabelle Caro, France, 2010, 28, Anorexia related – Filip Kapisoda, Montenegro, 2010, 22, Suicide – Lina Marulanda, Colombia, 2010, 29, Suicide – Tom Nicon, France, 2010, 22, Suicide – Ambrose Olsen, United States, 2010, 24, Suicide – Cibele Dorsa, Brazil, 2011, 36, Suicide – Gabby Joseph, United Kingdom, 2011, 16, Suicide – Yu-ri Kim, South Korea, 2011, 22, Suicide – Miyu Uehara, Japan, 2011, 24, Suicide – Jeniffer Viturino, Brazil, 2011, 17, Suicide – Claudia Boerner, Germany, 2012, 32, Suicide – Brittany Wallace, United Kingdom, 2012, 19, Anorexia related (Source: Blais 2012, np link).

This (and many other articles and shorts I’ve seen lately) focus solely upon the ‘supply – those who facilitate the modelling industry. No mention is ever made about the demand. A program I listened to recently was about the psychological damage fashion magazines do to the readers (almost exclusively women), how viewing idealized images of women depresses these readers. Who’s holding a gun to their heads and making them buy and consume this stupidity (Source: Mike 2012, np link)?

Scientific research shows that the human brain creates neural passageways every time it experiences something new. Neural passageways retain their strength every time you repeat the ‘new experience’. The market created a demand for prepubescent looking models. Now every time your son or daughter stands at the grocery store and flips through a magazine, they are retaining the neural passageway that tells them ‘this is beauty’. Over and over again it’s a mass brain washing and our society in general has come to accept that this is beauty. This is not unique just to the US. For example, the Japanese market likes their models looking very young and child-like. This can also be seen in all of the Japanese anime that characters look prepubescent as well. A concerning thought is who else besides kids and teens are enjoying looking at these child models? The possible answer is sickening, as every day the headlines scream out about another child who was victimized by adult (in some cases even a teacher or cop) often with the relationship being started online (Source: Borras 2013, np link).

In 2008, a survey found that a third of British schoolgirls aspire to become models – more than express an interest in any other career. This trend is the same around much of the world. … anybody with a catwalk-obsessed, ambitious daughter should take her to see it (Source: Kermode 2012, np link).

[Girl Model is] exactly the sort of film that should be shown in schools. If kids still want to model after that, at least their eyes are open (Source: Billson 2012, np link).

A girl sent to Tokyo on her own, a nice man treating her really nicely only if she does this and that, then oh she needs to relax so take this and that and here she goes down the spiral. Awful industry and just hope my daughter will be sensible and find something normal (Source: janka 2012, np link).

Remember to tell your children they are beautiful in a world were true beauty is taken for granted. You really can’t give them too many reminders from a loved one. – If you see your child looking online at magazine ads remind her (or him) that those people have been photoshopped to look as if they are ‘perfect’. Real people don’t look like that. Look online for stars without makeup to help show reality. – Watch Girl Model Movie Documentary with your preteen /teen. This is the documentary that spurred this article. – Families can talk about Girl Model‘s message about the modeling industry. Ask them questions like, ‘What don’t you see when you look at a beautiful girl’s photo in a magazine?’ – Discuss body image issues with your kids. What does it say about modeling when some of the bikini-clad girls are called ‘too fat’ or the scout says certain countries want to see only super skinny, super young girls? Could they be skinny because they live in poverty without access to proper nutrition? –  Monitor your child’s activity on the computer, who they are talking to, what they are looking at and how much time they are spending on the internet. Remember that too much online exposure can cause a false sense of reality and depression because the perfection of the people on display can seem so unattainable. – And this one is just for you to practice. Your kids are exactly that… kids. Don’t treat them like adults. Remember that they haven’t emotionally arrived yet and that they need your love and protection. Loving them means making sure that they are not being exposed to things that they are not ready for yet. This is why monitoring your kid’s online and mobile experiences is important (Source: Borras 2013, np link).

[A]s for all of us, we are forced to examine our own fantasies of beauty and perfection. Those faces we see in magazines, those bird-like bodies we watch coming down runways – those are real people, real women, real girls. The gloss of the camera and bright lights often obscures tear-stained faces and ugly realities (Source: Fulton 2013, np link).

Girl Model makes you wonder about every beautiful woman who’s ever stared out from a publication, poster, or billboard, looking sophisticated and self-assured. Could the real person behind that image be a hungry, homesick 13-year-old who never got a dime for her work (Source: Nakhnikian 2012, np link)?

[Girl Model is] a film that’s effectiveness strengthens more after you have seen it, because you start to realize that it goes far beyond those that are portrayed (Source: Almachar 2012, np link).

If those who are born into unfortunate circumstance can suffer like this and be given false hope, this world is damned. There are plenty of resources for everyone to have food, clothing, shelter and an education, but people who have control use it to make themselves richer and make these people poorer. I hate it. It’s wrong, and it needs to be stopped (Source: DisturbedPixie 2013, np link).

I downloaded this documentary off of iTunes. Glad I saw it – very shocking and sad, but well worth the watch. Nadya is a very shy but sweet girl, I really do wish her the very best (Source: Louise 2012, np link).

[A]s well-made and penetrating this documentary is, I’m not so sure I’ll be eager to see it again anytime soon (Source: Almachar 2012, np link).

Girl Model has garnered strong audiences and overwhelming critical acclaim for both its provocative subject matter and its realistic portrayal of what many think is a glamorous profession (Source: Fuller 2012, np).

When asked how audiences have been responding to the film, [director Ashley] Sabin replied that ‘shock’ has been the most typical reaction. ‘I think people are pretty disturbed. We certainly were. It doesn’t surprise me that people are responding to the material that way’ (Source: Clift 2012, np link).

The story the film tells is a specific one. Do you think such practices are widespread throughout the industry? [Director Ashley Sabin:] I think it even exists in New York. I think it exists in Paris. I think it exists in Italy. The reason I think that is because we did a bunch of screenings with the Model Alliance, and afterward the comments that we would get – from models, agents, fashion designers, fashion photographers – were not only the same story, they were worse. That surprised me – that there are all these people in this industry who are maybe forced to turn a blind eye. Maybe they don’t participate in this act, but they know about it (Source: Dixon 2013, np link).

After screening Girl Model all over the world we have found the most prominent question has been, ‘What kind of action can I take?’ It’s not always an easy question given the lyrical films we make, but it’s not an impossible question given how the documentary is hitting an emotional chord with audiences (Source: Sabin 2012, np link).

Audiences members are often outraged to witness some of the more disturbing aspects of the underbelly of the modeling and fashion industries – the illegal working conditions, the manipulation and exploitation of young, malleable girls. Some want a space to participate in discussions, events or actions around these problems, and to learn how they can hold the responsible parties accountable. This inspired us to create an outlet for these reactions as we strategized the film’s distribution. We conducted a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to raise an outreach budget, and began fueling conversations about Girl Model’s themes in social media and beyond. Raising awareness and media literacy among young boys and girls has become a major focus of our efforts. We’re working with Rachel Blais, who is featured in the film, and Outreach Coordinator Nancy Schwartzman to get young people talking, and to help book the film in high schools (Source: Sabin & Redmon 2012, np link).

Rachel Blais started her international modelling career in 2002. After a trip to India where she did volunteer work, Rachel met Girl Model co-directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin in Tokyo in 2009 (Source: Sabin 2012, np link).

She is … featured in the documentary (Source: Sabin 2012, np link).

Since then she has acted as the fashion consultant for the film and has been assisting on it’s development. Since Girl Model premiere at Tiff in September 2011 Rachel has been actively attending film festivals with Girl Model. She’s also helped organize the premiere screenings of Girl Model in London, UK and Montreal, Canada. By speaking out at screenings and to the media, Rachel has become a spokes-person for the film and for the fight against child labor practices in the fashion industry. Rachel has been on the model committee for the Trade-Union Equity in the UK since 2011 as she feels strongly about the importance of creating regulations to protect models in the fashion industry, but even more to stop using children, under 18 years old, to models as adults. With her experiences and observations of the industry she believes laws banning children to model in the adult fashion world is the only way for certain very negative practices within the industry to change and for regulations to be respected in the industry for adult models (Source: Sabin 2012, np link).

Recognizing that youth access their media online, Nancy (@fancynancynyc) and Rachel (@RachelBlais1) have developed a social media campaign to provide a platform to hear from models who have been silenced by the industry, using the Twitter hashtag #askagirlmodel. We have also built partnerships with The Model Alliance, Equity. Inspired by the activism of Spark Summit and Girls Leadership Institute, we hope to partner with them as well We didn’t set out to create a tool for advocacy, but it’s been highly rewarding to see Girl Model spark complex and productive dialogues as it enters the media landscape (Source: Sabin & Redmon 2012, np link).

{Director] David [Redmon]: … we have been speaking with two models (Dunja Knezevic and Victoria Keon-Cohen) who have formed a union in the UK called Equity Models Union. The union is exciting because, hopefully, it’s an internal shift in protecting models rights (Source: Anon 2012a np link).

[I]n February, … models in the U.S. launched Model Alliance. The non-profit group seeks workplace standards to address some issues raised in [Girl Model], including child labour laws (Source: Teotonio 2012, np link).

At the [Girl Model] screening were representatives from Models Alliance …. [Director Ashley] Sabin said she hopes that organizations can use the film as a tool to create regulation, ‘or at least have a conversation about why there is such a lack of transparency in a marketplace that is predominantly young women’ (Source: Nikas 2012, np link).

[W]e jumped at the chance to watch the full film at a special fashion industry screening last week, hosted by the Model Alliance at the Sunshine Theater in New York. So did industry insiders like Natalie Joos, Scott Lipps, Milla Jovovich, along with a slew of models (Source: Crotty 2012, np link).

On a rainy Wednesday evening last June, Sunshine Cinemas in Manhattan was bright with flashing bulbs as photographers snapped pictures of a gaggle of impossibly tall, impossibly beautiful women. The angelic onslaught was not a coincidence. They were all there to see a special screening of Girl Model … the situation depicted is not at all uncommon, and the audience, made up of dozens of models, was rapt. After the credits, Canadian model Rachel Blais addressed the room. Her struggles were featured in the film, and she has become a spokeswoman for better treatment for fashion models, travelling to screenings and other speaking engagements. Because of her outspokenness, she noted, she is now treated like a pariah. ‘I was dropped by my French agency, by my American agency everyone dropped me after the movie came out,’ Blais told the crowd. ‘The only reason my Canadian agency kept me on was because I appeared on TV so much they couldn’t drop me without drawing attention. But I haven’t worked in six months. This is the less than glamorous side of the modelling world, and its increasingly coming to mainstream attention. Behind the Photoshopped editorials and heavily made up surfaces, the industry still relies on unsafe, exploitative labour practices and a desperate workforce of scared young women. That, anyway, is the allegation put forth by a new advocacy group, the Model Alliance, which hosted the Girl Model screening. Facing down an industry mired in secrecy and reluctant to change, the Model Alliance has nonetheless won a series of small victories. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income for a model in America in 2010 was $US32,920, and though that might seem like a reasonable rate for standing around all day, consider that that is the average salary of all 1400 registered models. The bottom 10 per cent earn about $9.53 an hour, while the few supermodels those who are left, anyway skew the numbers. In 2012, the combined total of the top 10 highest paid global supermodels, according to Forbes, was just under $100 million. Almost half of that was earned by No.1 on the list, Gisele Bundchen. Of course, that figure only accounts for models who report their income not those, such as Girl Model Nadya, who have been told to lie about their age or have conditional work visas and aren’t going to be paying tax anytime soon. Not only is the pay meagre and often late, very few employers offer models overtime. Since they are essentially freelance contractors, they arent provided with health insurance. Subtract out of their pay the standard 20 to 25 per cent fee per gig that goes to a models agency, plus another 20 per cent finders fee the agency collects from the models employer, as well as repayment of any advances the agency fronted, for instance, to put up young models in one of those infamously cramped ghetto colonies known as model incubators: three bunk beds in a room, six girls in an apartment, $1600 each for rent. Often, models end up in debt to the very people who are supposed to be making them money. This assumes they get paid at all. Last March, 17 year old Hailey Hasbrook complained on Tumblr that she had worked 30 unpaid hours, some of them very late at night, in preparation for a Marc Jacobs show at New York Fashion Week. Her post was picked up by women’s blog Jezebel, sparking outrage. Even more galling was the Jacobs brands matter of fact response, via Twitter: ‘Models are paid in trade [meaning free designer clothing]. If they don’t want to work w/us, they don’t have to.’ … According to its mission statement, the Model Alliance aims to encourage a safe and healthy work environment that protects models mental and physical wellbeing. They provide services to members who have been sexually or otherwise abused, and offer a ‘free and discreet reporting service to put models in touch with industrial lawyers and union leaders who can advise them on workplace related issues. Its long term goals include an overhaul of the fashion industry’s labour practices: provisions for health insurance, proper immigration status, negotiable commissions, harassment free workplaces, age limit enforcements and clearer financial contracts for working models. But founder Sara Ziff, a tousled blonde Columbia University political science graduate who has walked the runway for Prada, is quick to point out the Alliance is an advocacy group, not a trade union. Ziff has partnered with Fordham University’s Fashion Law Institute and filled the non profits advisory board with prominent mannequins such as Coco Rocha, Milla Jovovich and Shalom Harlow. ‘Its important to get the right message out there,’ Ziff insists. ‘Its not about finger pointing, or saying that this agency is bad, or this client is bad. You need to give people the chance to do the right thing’ (Source: Grant 2013, p.6).

[Interviewer:] You were a model for 10 years tell me a little bit about your journey. What were your experiences like? [Sara Ziff:] Well I started modeling about the same time as Nadya. I was 14 years old really. So you don’t think that happens in the USA. Well, that’s the thing people like to think – that this is stuff that goes on on the other side of the world. It’s actually happening here in New York City as well. [Interviewer] Wow. [Ziff:] And that’s why I formed the Model Alliance which is a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry. Uh, you know, I know firsthand the problems in the industry and I don’t want to make modeling out to be a terrible thing. I think it it can be a really fun job and, uh, if you’re lucky and successful then, um, I have no problem with it, uh, there’s a lot that I’ve gained from that experience. But what I do have a problem with is that child models are pretty much the only child performers who are not regulated by the Department of Labor and have almost no protections right. So, you know, we actually are independent contractors instead of employees. We don’t have protections against sexual harassment in the workplace we don’t, uh, even have minimum wage law that applies to us so often. We’re not paid in money. We’re paid in clothes. [Interviewer:] Wow. [Ziff:] You know, a tank top … does not pay the rent (Source: CBS News 2013, np link).

‘I just think what Sara Ziff is doing is very quixotic,’ says Michael Gross, author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. ‘She’s tilting at windmills. Because when you have a 14 year old modelling, the problem isn’t the agencies. The problem isn’t the fashion magazines. Its not Marc Jacobs. The problem is the parents. What kind of idiot parent lets their 14 year old go off to a big city to model without being on top of them?’ Perhaps, but if the industry wasn’t ready to take advantage of poor parenting, its consequences wouldn’t be so destructive. It seems impossible to imagine that until recently there was so little oversight governing the role these young swans play in the multi billion dollar apparel trade (Source: Grant 2013, p.6).

Nadya Vall, now 17, at the center of it all, … has never even seen the film. She’s still working as a model and her agency is furious with the way she’s been portrayed in the film. Vall told us over email that she is confused and frustrated to learn, via letters and the internet, that she’s been depicted as a victim. … Nadya … told [us]: ‘I have not seen the movie, but I read the comments and a description for this film, recordings, and was unpleasantly shocked! … My agency Noah Models always sends me to good agencies abroad! do not deceive us and always care about us! [sic] in general I can say that I do not agree with the way modeling life is presented in the movie’ (Source: Phelan 2012a, np link).

[Nadya] has expressed her anger about the way she was portrayed. [She] …  is ‘humiliated’ by the film and does not agree with the way the modelling industry has been portrayed in the film. … ‘I kept on getting letters from unknown people from different countries. They were offering me help considering me a victim. ‘These horrible people… did such a junk out of a real story.’  Her Russian agency, NOAH, added: ‘Nadya and her parents are humiliated with this as well as our whole NOAH team.’ The team behind the documentary, however, deny this claim, adamant there was no trickery involved when filming. Girl Model filmmaker, David Redmon said: ‘The problem is when 12-15 year old girls are placed inside a marketplace of adults that sexualizes them and treats them as disposable goods, there’s an infinite potential for the situation to go awry’ (Source: Fleming 2012, np link).

The team behind the documentary, however, deny this claim, adamant there was no trickery involved when filming. Girl Model filmmaker, David Redmon said: ‘The problem is when 12-15 year old girls are placed inside a marketplace of adults that sexualizes them and treats them as disposable goods, there’s an infinite potential for the situation to go awry’ (Source: Fleming 2012, np link).

In an unexpected turn, Nadya … accused [the film’s] male co-director of being ‘a sexual predator’ (Source: Pierce 2012, np link).

[Nadya] Vall has spoken out … [in] a YouTube video … in which … [she] accuses [David Redmon] … of being ‘a knifing manipulator and a sexual predator.’ ‘During his visit to Japan he made sexual advances at me,’ reads the English language translation that accompanies Vall’s statement in Russian. ‘He flew to Japan alone several times to meet with me. Until today, David keeps calling me as he is obsessed by me’ (Source: Clift 2012, np link).

[David Redmon] has denied making sexual advances towards his film’s then 13-year-old subject, the gravest of a series of accusations levelled against him and his co-director in the wake of the movie’s completion. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ [he] tells [us] on the line from New York. … When asked if he ever witnessed Redmon acting inappropriately towards Vall, [NOAH Models pwner Tigran Khachatrian] responded that he ‘had only met those two producers in Paris where I gave them a brief interview’ and thus ‘never had the opportunity to observe any of the events that happened in-between Nadia Val and David Raymon [sic].’ However, Khachatrian does claim that ‘now we are discovering that other models were also molested by him both in Russia and in Japan and they are willing to come forward.’ Sabin contends that NOAH are simply targeting her husband because of his gender, stating that they ‘were both there’ when the film was being shot (Source: Clift 2012, np link).

Vall’s video, posted on June 26, 2012 by a user named ‘Dmitriy NoahModels’, also claims that Redmon and Sabin ‘cut and pasted segments of that film so that the result purely suites [sic] their needs … they wanted to cast a dark shadow on the modeling industry so then they could create a negative sensation that usually interests the Western public more and excites the media.’ But Sabin and Redmon maintain that the accusations are part of an ongoing attempt by NOAH Models to discredit the film, with both of them likening Vall’s statement to ‘a hostage video.’ ‘It’s so clear that Nadya didn’t write that,’ says Redmon. ‘It’s really disturbing,’ agrees Sabin. ‘That’s why we haven’t taken it down, because I think it says more about how the agency is than the film could.’ NOAH Models is owned by Tigran Khachatrian, himself briefly interviewed at the beginning of Girl Model. In an email correspondence with [us], Khachatrian said that ‘the movie called ‘Girl Story’ is a fraudulent movie that was made by cutting and pasting sentences that were not said or expressed in reality,’ adding that ‘we are currently filing a law suite [sic] against these two filmmakers who have disgraced true journalism.’ (In both Vall’s video and Khachatrian’s statement to [us], the film is referred to as ‘Girl Story’. Similarly, Redmon is referred to as ‘Raymon.’) (Source: Clift 2012, np link).

Are you still in touch with Nadya and the other girls? What are they doing now? Are they still in debt? Ashley [Sabin]: We recently receive a message from Nadya that she has decided to continue working as a model. Having gone through the emotional experience of her first trip to Japan, it’s a bit incredible to us that she’d want to continue that line of work. But we also understand that, because of her background and the economic situation of her family, she views the prospect of being a model as an opportunity to escape and work overseas (Source: Anon 2012a, np link).

‘Our relationship with Nadya has changed over the years,’ Sabin said. ‘When she got back from Japan a second time, we sent someone to her village to convey our concerns about these situations and these contracts, and to ask if she had made any money and what her debt situation was, and the fixer came back to us and said, ‘You have to stop asking questions. The family is going to get into trouble.’ We say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ on Facebook. That’s about it’ (Source: Johnson 2012, p.20 link).

[W]hat is even more weird and creepy is that you can follow … [Nadya] on twitter and see how her life is now (Source: Bartlett-Roylance 2013, np link).

What was Ashley [Arbaugh]’s reaction to the finished documentary? [Sabin:] Her main criticism was that her experiences in Japan were positive and we portrayed them negatively, which is really interesting when you look at her personal diary footage. It’s totally contrary to what she said. We’re not in touch anymore. She really started pushing back on the film, so we just parted ways. Her reaction seemed really appropriate to her position, which was that she didn’t want to look at the situation very hard. What do you hope is the impact of the film? [Sabin:] The film doesn’t say don’t model. What we’re advocating for is: If these parents and their daughters decide to get involved in the industry, that they know their rights and know there is protection. These are the questions you should be asking about your contract. Don’t have the agency translate it; insist that it’s in your local language. That’s what we’re really hoping comes out of [the film], because we know the industry’s going to continue. It has a really high turnover rate. There are going to be young girls who step up in the place of the Nadyas, so really, it’s just about informing people and empowering people so they can make the right decision and so they’re not taken advantage of (Source: Dixon 2013, np link).

How do you feel about [Ashley Arbaugh’s] decision to continue working in the industry? [Sabin:] I think Ashley is a very complicated person. The fact she approached us in 2007 and was involved in the industry but at the same time wanted to be a whistleblower is something that initially attracted us to the story.  I think her motivation changed during filming. I think at the beginning she thought she was going to get out of the industry and as the film progressed she got deeper into the industry (Source: theculturalomnivore 2013, np link).

Girl Model … [a film] exposing the sexual exploitation of underage models in Japan, was withdrawn from the BBC2 schedule amid heightened sensitivities over the [TV personality and paedophile] Jimmy Savile affair. A Panorama investigation into the Savile scandal is due to be aired on Monday (Source: Sherwin 2012, np link).

BBC chiefs axed [the] probe into the ‘dehumanising culture’ of young fashion models amid the panic around the Jimmy Savile scandal gripping the [BBC] (Source: Robertson 2012, p.9).

Showing in competition at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, writer-director Saulė Bliuvaitė’s debut feature ‘Toxic’ is a hard-hitting coming-of-age story which eschews the cliches as her 13-year-old protagonists come to terms with their bodies and identities one hot summer in Lithuania. … Sold by Bendita Film Sales, part of the film’s inspiration came from the 2011 documentary ‘Girl Model’ by Ashley Sabin and David Redmond, while part of it came from her own experience. ‘Watching this film I remembered how it was, the castings I participated in’ (Source: Bleasdale 2024, np link). 

[Saulė Bliuvaitė:] I was deeply inspired by this film because it echoed my own experiences. When I was around the same age, modeling recruitment was quite popular in the Baltic States where I grew up. Sometimes scouts would come to schools and ask all the girls to stand up in class and select potential model candidates, inviting them to meet later. This experience made me want to explore the themes of beauty standards and the pressures young girls face, ultimately leading to the creation of my project [Source: Kodagoda 2024, np link).