Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Festival 2012: Documentary Girl Model reveals underbelly of modelling world, human slavery

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, who’s trying to eke out a living as a model to support her family, 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.”
It’s one of many poignant scenes in the documentary Girl Model, a behind-the-scenes exploration of an unregulated industry, told from the perspective of scouts, agencies and models.
The film, which took more than three years to make, opens Friday in Toronto at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and runs until April 18. 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 modelsince 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.”
Girl Model focuses on Russian girls in Japan, but the issues raised in the documentary are industry-wide, says Blais. When she was 18, she lived in New York City, trying to survive on $120 a week and forced to borrow rent money from her agency.
Some of the problems in the modelling world made headlines in February, when models in the U.S. launched Model Alliance. The non-profit rights group seeks workplace standards to address some of the issues raised in the film, including child labour laws.
“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),” Sabin told the Star. “They’re self-regulating and that’s extremely problematic when you’re dealing with youth.”
The documentary focuses on Ashley Arbaugh, an American former model who scours Siberia for young, skinny, “fresh” models for the Japanese market; and her newest discovery, Nadya, a self-described “ordinary country girl,” who until recently shared a bed with her grandmother in the family’s small, modest house.
Nadya and her parents are thrilled when Arbaugh’s agency offers a contract in Japan that guarantees work for roughly two months and $8,000. 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.
She’s left to fend for herself and although she keeps an English-Russian dictionary close at hand, she’s unable to communicate. Like other girls, she’s told to lie about her age, saying she’s 15, and is put through a grueling schedule of casting calls and rejections.
One day, Nadya’s contract is terminated without explanation. She returns home $2,000 in debt to the Japanese modelling agency to cover expenses such as her work visa, flight and apartment.
Meanwhile, Arbaugh continued 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 industryand noting some young recruits wind up as prostitutes. Yet she continues in a business she describes as vacuous and “based on nothing.”
Arbaugh’s ambivalence was typical of insiders, says 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.”
Blais, who first travelled to Tokyo at age 19, remembers meeting “innocent little girls” from around the world. She used sign language when trying to communicate with those who didn’t speak English to let them know that it was okay to cry.
Both the modelling business and governments can change the industry.
Blais says there would be fewer abuses in the industry if it set a minimum age of 18 for models, and if governments prohibited minors from working as adults.
There’s the issue of taste and honesty in advertising.
It’s more honest to have adults representing adults in advertisements, Blais says, and disturbing to see young girls pretend to be women, especially when they’re in overtly sexual poses. When she was scouted at 14, she was tall but had the face and body of a 9-year-old.
There are also legal issues.
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 these types of images to appear in magazines, under the guise of fashion?
Older models, Blais says, are more likely to speak up when feeling uncomfortable on a photo shoot, particularly one that involves nudity.
Recruiting young models normalizes the lack of regulation, says Blais, noting that when several models live together and share similar experiences, they’re bound to think their working conditions are normal.
By the time they’re a bit older — say, 20 — and have a better understanding of their rights, they may be encouraged to lie about their age, pretending to be younger to get work.
It’s also in the models’ apartments where young girls typically develop eating disorders, Blais says; they’re surrounded by girls who don’t eat properly, either because they don’t know how to cook or have body issues.
The filmmakers hope the documentary raises awareness and prompts people to ask, “What’s the real story behind this image?”
“We hope people walk away and question what are behind the images we see everyday, whether it’s on a billboard or in a magazine,” says Sabin.

Girl Model opens Friday at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and runs until April 18.