America's Next Top Model and Why You Don't Want to Be One

I watch America's Next Top Model with grim amusement. It all looks too glamorous, or does it? How glamorous it must be to write messages in peoples brownies, or presume another member of the group has anorexia or bulimia. You have to do something to make yourself feel better.

The truth is, models are not all self-confident, they are not all perfect and they are not all happy. A long time ago, I agreed to sit for my friend's photo-journalism practical. The pictures were successful and she suggested I try it out. So I did. In the beginning there always seems to be hope, a glimmer at the end of the media-driven tunnel. Until you face reality. I had a portfolio shot and began the endless search for an agency that would take me on. I never really had the confidence to pull it off, looking back. I didn't have Eva Pickford's ravenous determination to succeed, or Yoanna's quiet self-belief. I wasn't brazen enough to say what I wanted and get it. It's hard work. When I went to work in Chicago for a time, I enlisted with onemodelplace.com and started being photographed by professional photographers, it wasn't funny. I remember arriving in a place called Champagne at 7am in the frosty Illinois winter. I left at 9pm. Clad in a black leather bustier and having my face primed, I started to wonder if Claudia and Cindy had had to do this. I was freezing. No compliments, people, only criticism. ''She cleans up good.'' That was about the closest you could get to a compliment. My posture wasn't up to scratch either, and I had to constantly be bending my spine to give my boyish physique ''curves''. When I left, I couldn't bend over, the spinal muscles were screaming at me. Attitude, I didn't have enough attitude or so the photographer said. After the constant cajoling and bickering, I was ready to show him attitude. However, attitude and confidence is something, as Jay Manuel says, a model needs to have herself, she can't rely on other people bringing it out in her.

Then of course, there is the question of whether you are the right type of model for a job. Johannesburg agencies had the following to say: too short, too blonde, skew teeth, skin out of condition (cigarette puffing isn't really a models pastime). So what would I be right for? Thankfully, I gave up the very short dabble in the fashion world. In one fashion show I did, it was quite evident that models are insecure, they size you up when you get to the dressing-room. Dressing in public isn't much fun either. You have to be completely uninhibited and that isn't for everyone.

I suppose in the end it was a good experience, I made some good friends, including the difficult photographer I previously mentioned. Yet when you watch America's Next Top Model Again, be aware, it really is that bad. If you can bear criticism, long hours, dressing in public, bitchiness, obsession with your appearance, starving...you might just make it. The Gisele's and Daria's of this world are few and far between and the road to success is most often long and hard. Maybe if I had chased it doggedly , with all my might, I could been a mediocre model. But I think I'm much happier writing opiniated pieces on what I believe to be a very shallow society.