CSR Documentary #3
Lacey Robertson
Model girl
Week 10
Documentary Information
The 78-minute documentary Model Girl was directed by David
Redmon and Ashley Sabin and produced by Carnivalesque Films. Ashley Arbaugh
played the lady who was casting the girls. It was released in 2012 and is
mostly filmed in Tokyo, Siberia and America.[1]
Video Summary
Model girl is about the modeling industry and girls going
overseas to work for agencies. It stars a model scout named Ashley and two very
young models. The documentary starts off in Siberia at very big casting for an
agency in Japan. First the girls stand in a line and the models that get picked
by the scout go onto the next stage. Then those girls walk for judges and the
ones that get picked by the judges get their photos and information taken, and
then leave. The girls that are chosen will receive a contract for an agency in
Japan. The agency will pay for your flight and stay in Japan but you are
required to pay it back through the work you get in Japan. You must also follow
all the requirements and restrictions on the contract or it will be terminated.
While the models are in a foreign place they are left to care for themselves
with little help of the agency. There contract guarantees the girls at least
two jobs and money to go home with but in most cases the girls leave owing
money to the agency because they don’t have enough paying jobs to cover there
expenses. The agency then sends the girls back to their hometown without any
money. Some of the girls go overseas to model so they are able to help their
family pay for their everyday living so when they come home with no money they
become in even more debt.
The modeling scout Ashley is a former model and enjoys
recruiting models because it gives her the control she never had when she was a
model. In Japan the agencies require the girls to be young and “new faced”
meaning barely any experience. They want these kinds of girls so they can
easily exploit them by charging them more expenses and lowing there pay from
jobs. Ashley, the scout, helps Japanese’s agency do this but she knows that it
isn’t right. During the documentary it shows video clips of her when she was a
model. The videos are of her talking about how she feels and things that she
did. When she was a model she didn’t actually like it; she just did it because
it was all she knew and it is still all she knows. She feels bad because she
goes there promising them that they will make money and get the recognitions
they have been trying so hard to get.
The model that Ashley discovers in Siberia is names Nadya.
She is thirteen years old and can barely speak English. She doesn’t have any
experience and hardly any printed photos in her portfolio. Her parents are very
poor and she can’t even call them because they have no phone so Nadya is pretty
much their on her own. She stays in model apartment with another model; the
room is so small only bunk bed can fit. After working for a month her roommate
was sent home early because she wasn’t booking jobs and gained weight. A short
time after Nadya left as well, 2000$ in debt. It’s hard for the girls because
they are too young to monitor what they are being charged by the agency so they
end up being robbed without even knowing it. The agencies also have a lot of
requirements like not gaining any weight, and not riding a bicycle and if you
break any of the requirements you’ll be sent home.
Personal Opinions and thoughts
I took this documentary very seriously because I was in this
exact situation. When I was 18 years old I found out that I had been accepted
to an agency in Tokyo, Japan for a three-month contract. At first I was really
excited because I had been working really hard to be recognized. I soon realised
that I knew nothing about Japan and my image of it was very off. After I did
some research I felt better but I was still really nervous because I wasn’t for
sure about anything and people were putting bad thoughts in my head. I was also
had never been on a plane before.
When I arrived there after a sixteen-hour flight, I was
suppose to take a bus to Tokyo and call the agency before I boarded the bus. It
took me an hour to figure out how to use the pay phone but luckily someone came
to help me but they didn’t speak English. When I was purchasing my ticket I
bought it to the wrong place and when I got to the stop I waited about a half
an hour before I called the agency again and told them where I was and they
told me someone would come to pick me up.
When someone finely came to pick me up, they told me I was
going to go to a casting before going to where I was going to stay but I was so
upset I wasn’t able to. When I was brought to where I would stay I was told to
take my shoes off and to come down to the agency, which was downstairs, in the
morning. After they closed the door behind them I instantly felt so alone. I
tried calling my parents but I wasn’t able to work the telephone so I just went
to sleep. Not long after my roommate came home, She was from Ukraine and was
about 16 years old and could speak some English; her name was Sveta. She showed
me around that night and told me how things worked since she had been their
once before.
For the rest of the months I stayed there I actually made
myself at home. I meet Japanese people who could speak English and went out. As
the time went on though I wasn’t really booking any jobs so I started to go to
clubs more often because they gave you taxi money to get home and I would just
take it and save it. That’s how I was able to live there. I started to realise
that my agency that I was in wasn’t a very good one and that’s why I wasn’t booking
any jobs but there wasn’t any. The agency also didn’t want to send me home
because it would cost them more so I requested to be sent to another agency.
They sent to me to an agency in Osaka, Japan. The agency was good but they
required that I loss weight in under ten days. Also where I stayed was nothing
like my apartment in Japan. The room in Osaka had a small kitchenette with a
hotplate and a small bathroom. It was really lonely and scary there because I
didn’t have a roommate, I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t know where I was. I
only knew how to get to the subway station and agency. When I was there someone
followed me to my apartment and said something to me I didn’t understand.
Because of all of that I asked to go to home before I signed the second
contract but they wouldn’t let me unless I paid for my expenses that I already
acquired. At first the expenses were 3000$ but I found so many mistakes so it
was actually 2000$. Luckily I saved the money that the club gave me for a taxi
because I had to pay my money in order to go home.
I think about that everyday. I feel exploited. I quit my
agency because I thought they cared about me but it turns out they didn’t. When
I told them I wanted to going home they told me if you leave Japan and make us
look bad we would terminate your contract. They also turned the situation on me
and tried to make me feel bad by saying “look how much we did for you; how
could you do this to us”. I can’t
believe they knowingly sent me to an agency that wasn’t a good one just to make
some money. I still haven’t received any of the work that I did in Japan. I now
only model when I want to and when it’s for fun.
Bibliography
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