" Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men
who find it easier to live in the world they have been given than to explore
the power they have to change it".........David Beckham
To many of us being attractive gives a sense of
pinnacle achievement, a lifelong morale booster and sometimes a medium of
self-appreciation. Some try to enjoy this feeling through compliments from
someone they love, others try to find this through validation from our society.
Quite a few aspire to climb the ladder and build a glamorous career out of it
and live their dreams, e.g. Modeling.
Being photographed by virtue of your physical
attributes, and receiving appreciation for it as a career is a badge that is likely always to have many
joyful candidates. And well, I’ve had
the privilege in my experience to be a recipient.
Being short and skinny, society has always told
me that I would never make the cut when it came to competing to flaunt one’s
sexuality. So, from an early age, I didn’t bother much with aesthetic appeal.
For myself, being photographed (professionally of course, and not by my Mum)
was a bit of an Achilles heel which I would never be able to treat.
My time in Edinburgh had taught me a lot about
life and in the Scottish Autumn of 2012,
I would be taught about modeling. This would
come about as I was to be in the spotlight of a professional cameraman.
I was scouted at a gym by a photography intern
who said that his boss might be interested in shooting me, and potentially
using the pictures for their agency newsletter.
After a few inquiries and seemingly random
questions I volunteered to do the shoot.
When I met the photographer I was told that they
wanted to work around my dark features and photographed me wearing a casual
suit and a hat. It was more or less similar to a portfolio shoot, I was given
one month to work out and beef up my upper body as much as possible. Since I
had a recurrent injury in my right knee, my lower body workouts were very
limited. If I had any hope of pulling off this shoot it would be with natural
(or nearly natural) expressions and confident body language.
In light of this, I felt I should start
naturalizing myself to the habits of a model, so from taking care of my hair to
perfectly finishing my finger nails, I began to behave just like a
metro-sexual. I hired a personal trainer in order to get my workouts tailored
as well as to change my eating habits. After all, a model’s skin should look
just the way the camera sees it best. It was a hell of a lot of stress but none
the less, I was game for the challenge.
My achilles heel, which had once been an
obstacle was looking merely like a stone and with the passage of time the stone
grew smaller. The body was looking much more proportionate than it had a few
weeks back and I was feeling fit.
Fast forwarding to D Day, the day of my shoot,
when all of my self fed stereotypes were to be smashed. The afternoon was less
cold than had been predicted. The studio was a well furnished commercial
premise inside an old warehouse, and as I walked in I could feel the
conventional modeling vibe. The huge spotlights, camera, make-up artist and
photographer created a busy feeling, the photographer being in the process of
working on his just shot photos.
I was asked by the make-up artist to exfoliate
my face. I tried doing so gently but as she wasn’t impressed, she grabbed my
cheek and rubbed the make-up salt on my face. After that, there was the usual
touch-ups, the concealer, the toner, etc, etc. I was then asked to stand front
side back and stood like that for about an hour and twenty minutes, my feet
were killing me. However, the photographer wasn’t happy at all and he asked me
to exfoliate my face again and to redo the touch-ups. Gosh! My face was 6mm
thicker than usual. Though I enjoyed the attention and spotlight, I felt for
the professionals and I was glad I wasn’t doing this day in, day out. It would
be such a grueling job!
The entire shoot lasted about 4 hours, he took
70 odd pictures and some time for review. “Oh these are beautiful”, he said,
“Your mother would like it for sure”. “Only my mother?” I said in revert.
In our lives, we always have more than one
dimension in which to view anything. In this case, I would have been
comfortable letting my self-limiting belief that I was not fit to be the
subject of a photo shoot, ruin my vision of myself as an object of sexual and
aesthetic appeal. However, I chose to proceed despite my inhibition, and
benefited from trying something new.
We shouldn’t ever believe in stereotypes,
instead we should be open to experimenting with unfamiliar circumstances.
The boy with small feet has actually got some
sexy legs.
