The Model Agency - The unintentional darker, sadder side of the fashion industry

Any prospective young models out there should give this a watch before they even consider skipping down to a modelling agency, photo portfolio in hand. This new fly on the wall documentary series, which started last night on Channel 4, shows us the true reality of selling your soul to the world of modelling. And it isn’t a pretty one.

The series follows Premier Model Management, in the typical what I call ‘action, description, action, description’ format. This style of television came from the US, where we’re shown about 15 seconds of footage then it cuts to one of the subjects talking to the camera/interviewer about what just happened (just watch about 2 minutes of ANY American factual show, you’ll see what I mean). Usually this format enrages me as it can feel patronising, however with this programme, the solitary moments in the tiny studio and a camera gives the subjects time to reflect on their feelings, worries, afterthoughts and conclusions, giving us a more human insight into the activities on screen.

Take, for example, the booking agent Annie’s maternal relationship with up-and-coming Premier model India Farrell. After being scouted by the company 4 years earlier, India had been carefully nurtured into becoming one of the agency’s top new faces and was promptly whisked off to New York aged just 16. We then discover that after being told not to put on any more weight (despite her waif-like physique) by some draconian New York agency, she breaks down and wants to quit altogether. We don’t see any of this happening, just a extremely stressed and tearful Annie, who clucks around the office wailing of how she just wants to help India, and how much she’ll regret not taking the opportunity now. In a lot of ways, it’s heartwarming to see somebody care so much for this young woman, although I can’t help but wonder how many girls go through the same horrendous experience at such a young age for the sake of this ‘opportunity’.

Modelling and the fashion industry are forever under scrutiny for the way they portray beauty and perfection and this programme makes no apologies for having such standards for young men and women. “They should look like they’re from another planet”, one of the booking agents assures us. He does have a point, if models did look like ordinary people, then there wouldn’t be such a demand for them. Ultimately, I like the show for its honesty and frank nature when it comes to such a bitterly brutal industry. As agency boss Carol White so poignantly puts it “Your product isn’t a bottle on a shelf. It talks back.” Sad, but hopelessly true.

Young, Jobless and Living at Home. Sound familiar??

Young people are 3 times more likely to be unemployed than adults. How’s that for a merry statistic? Well there’s plenty more to come as BBC3 have put together another documentary for and about young people, this time about the perils of a life of unemployment. Meet the ‘boomerang generation’, those who go off to uni and end up back at home for years as they cant afford to move out, and the rest, who just can’t find work full stop. Brace yourself.

Radio 1 stud Greg James is our presenter for the evening, a charming, approachable looking young man who schlepped up and down the country offering his sincerest sympathies to the unemployed young people he meets. He is a self -confessed ‘lucky one’, landing his job at Radio 1 immediately after graduating from university, and he’s all too aware that this is a rarity these days.

Throughout the programme we learn a few worrying statistics, like that as many as 1 in 5 16 to 24 year olds are unemployed and 2 in 5 people in their early 20s are living with their parents as they are unable to afford to move out. For the next hour Greg meets as cross section of desperate young folk, each pursuing very different paths to employment, and I despair. It’s so sad and so completely and utterly true, that if you’re under 25 and in decent employment, you’re darn lucky.

After a meeting with one of the unemployed younglings, Greg muses to the camera an analogy of education being like a conveyor belt, from primary school right the way up to university and then BAM! You’re on you own; you fall off the belt and don’t know what happens next. A feeling I’m sure many of you reading this will understand all too well.

The case studies picked for this couldn’t be more different, each with their naiveties and dreams waiting to be inevitably crushed. When we meet 18 year old Becca who gushes that in a year’s time she hopes to be pregnant, or already with a baby, living with her boyfriend in their own apartment paid for with his fantastic job (that he hasn’t got yet) you have to wonder what planet she’s living on. It takes her months and countless cv handing out and repeated applications to get her a part time job at Whetherspoons, which in the end she loves. Oh and they do get a flat AND have a baby. It is nice when things work out for people.

Less success stories for the other participants however, as only 1 of the 6-featured lands his ‘dream job’ in the music biz and that’s only after about a year of unpaid work and he even admits to being lucky as it can usually take 2 or 3. The most prominent point of the documentary I found was that not only is the quest for a job often a long and arduous one, but quite often for young people with actual skills, be it training in a specific field or a qualification, there aren’t enough jobs to fit that criteria, so people end up in the poorly paid, part time jobs, as there are always those about. 

This is a subject matter that is all too close to home for me. I am a graduate, but I am not unemployed and I don’t live with my parents. So whilst I’m not another statistic that would fit in with this documentary, alas I work part time in a bar, as I cannot find THAT job I want. But if this documentary preaches something we all know, its that persistence is the key.

Catch Young, Jobless and Living at home here

Big Fat Gypsy Stereotypes

Round 2 of Channel 4's voyeuristic look at Gypsy weddings ended on Tuesday night after 5 episodes, spawning millions of viewings and countless tweets, all of which came not without a dose of controversy, just take a look here, here and here.

For the purpose of this blog post I thought I'd take a look at the tweets in question and boy, was I shocked. Take this one, for example: Why the fuck should gypo's get a voice when they don't pay for anything? Swerving c**s#BigFatGypsyWeddings.

Wow. Now not all the tweets were quite so vulgar, inhereintly racist and as disgusting as this but it definitely demonstrates just how much animosity still exists towards the Gypsy and Traveller community. Which is exactly what the last episode, Bride and Prejudice, set out to demonstrate. Only it didn't, I believe anyway. Once again we were thrust into the glitzy, tacky, tits and tiaras world of the OTT Gypsy wedding, with a few slices of the prejudice and racism they are faced with every day. We saw some miss spelled racist graffiti and a few blurred out country men grumbling the word 'gypo'. But ok, the title suggests it had to stick to one constand theme.

The show is a prime time entertainment programme, 'cause we love nothing more than a bit of smug-tastic telly time, basically laughing and/or sneering at the stuff other people do. As the episodes went on, it appeared to attempt to distance itself from the tenacious onslaught of humongous dresses and blurred out grooms, as it delved deeper into the culture and psyche of Gypsy men and the vehermently conservative traditions they stand by.

After the success of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which aired last year, it was clear there was a sudden interest in the community, presumably why Channel 4 commissioned a further, extended series. However, although the show promised 'unpresendented access to the UK's most secretive communities', we were still bombarded with the same clichéd twadle we'd seen before. We didn't see any REAL racism, we didn't find out why the mortality rate for Gypsies is so much lower than country people and there was rarely a clear distinction between Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies, which in my mind are quite different.

I have a personal attatchment and fascination with Gypsy and Traveller culture ever since I did a report on a Gypsy site for University and have since sought to make people think twice before they judge. And just for the record, the Gypsies I worked with were nothing like what Big Fat Gypsy Weddings displayed; true, they are private, proud people who mostly just want to integrate with our communities, but no, they don't all trot about spray tanning their children and boozing in graveyards. But they wouldn't make as interesting a documentary, I'll bet.

I do think that the show had good intentions and it mostly succeeded in showing us the cultural diversity existing on our doorstep, however people will always be left to make their own conclusion of what they see on television, which you only need to look on twitter to see that it isn't always a pleasant one. Ultimately, people will always be suspicious of things they don't understand, and Gypsies will fall under that category for many years to come.

The People's Supermarket: Democratic Utopia or Another Lefty Pipe Dream?

The People's Supermarket is a new series that begun on Sunday 6th February on Channel 4. Initially I was a little sceptical about the way the issue of supermarkets taking over neighbourhoods would be treated, but I'm drawn to anything food or consumer affairs related so this appeared to be a winner.

After a montage introducing chef Arthur Potts Dawson and his mission to change people's shopping habits, the programme opens with Arthur Posh Name being shown around the ghostly, hollow shell of a closed down supermarket. Complete with the twinkly, inspirational background music we're immediately plunged into his Dream of a completely cooperative supermarket run For the People, By the People. But can he do it? And how many episodes can we make out of this? Stay tuned.

My first impressions was that the start of the show was very fast paced, one minute we were being shown around Arthur's idyllic restaurant garden where he utilises all his kitchen waste to make compost to grow the vegetables, proudly showing us his home grown “concrete jungle beetroot”, then we're were being thrust into the dreadfully melancholy section about milk, as prices have been forced down so much by the supermarkets, the dairy industry has been brought to its knees.

“We aren't producers, we're slaves” sighs one of the dowdy farmers. We have a moment to watch uncomfortably as a farmer tries to hide his tears from the camera followed by a few stills of an empty milking station and a farm under a setting sun. Nice metaphor.

 My cynicism remains as we're shown this utter utopia of new-age hippie supermarket in New York (before you judge I work the cafe of a cooperative vegetarian shop so I'm all too familiar with the concept and its ideals) where running costs are kept low by getting its members to work for free for so many hours a month. GENUIS. Arthur decides to copy. Uh oh, I sense the less altruistic Brits aren't gonna be quite so game.

 By far the most shocking and insightful part of the programme was when we go around with the 'Wombles of Crystal Palace' and see the scale of food waste in the supermarket bins. It got me thinking; some documentaries have the power and impact to change corporation's ways (think Jamie's School Dinners and Supersize Me), could this do the same? I'd be interested to hear what the bigwigs at Tesco and Waitrose would have to say about the wastage revelation.

As it continues, I begin to admire Arthur's bravery and start caring less about trying to pick holes in it. Unlike the unimpressed locals complaining about the price of Winalot and 2 packs of Andrex in his freshly opened, half stocked People's Supermarket. This may end up being a project that could spread about the country, if it proves to be a success. I still think it will rely on postcodes, however, as the more affluent the area, the more people who will get on board as the idea of a joining fee just for 10% off Coca Cola and organic artichoke won't draw everyone in, as this first episode demonstrates clearly.

Saying that, if a People's Supermarket opened near me would I join it? I think I would.