Picture me / Fotografe-me

Fotografe-me

Sara Ziff

"Nós poderemos precisar ver você sem sutiã, ele me disse. Eu tinha 14 anos. Nem tinha seios ainda."

Como top model adolescente, Sara Ziff estava ganhando dinheiro com que suas amigas de escola sem sequer sonhavam. Mas havia um preço a pagar. Ela conta a Louise France por que fez um documentário sobre a realidade por trás das câmeras.

Louise France The Observer.

Uma bela mulher senta-se de frente para uma câmera de vídeo. Seu nome é Sena Cech, modelo fotográfica. O que ele irá descrever são trivilialidades na indústria em que trabalha. A Cena: uma candidata a modelo com um fotógrafo, um dos mais famosos em sua profissão. A certa altura da entrevista, ele pede a Cech para se despir. Ela obedece e tira as roupas. Em seguida, o fotógrafo começa também a se despir. " Querida - você pode fazer uma coisa um pouco sexy", ele diz a ela. O famoso fotógrafo quer ser sexualmente tocado. Este trecho da tradução foi eliminado por ser constrangedor demais.

"Eu fiz," diz ela, olhando para a câmera. "mas depois eu me senti mal por tê-lo feito." No dia seguinte, ela é informada que o trabalho é dela, se quiser. Ela recusa. "Não gostei de como o casting foi feito. Se foi tão sexual, eu tinha certeza de que o trabalho seria realmente sexual e bruto."

Este é o lado medonho, degradante, da indústria das passarelas o lado sobre o qual poucos conhecedores gostam de comentar.

Sena Cech é uma de um punhado de modelos que decidiram falar em público sobre o lado sua profissão onde aparece a má reputação, sem o decantado glamour, e, ocasionalmente, abusivo, para um novo documentário, Picture Me. A mulher que fez o filme é Sara Ziff, modelo de passarelas transformada em produtora de documentários.

Ziff é uma informante incomum. Ela fez centenas de milhares de dólares com o seu trabalho de modelo. Sua razões para falar não têm nada a ver com vingança ou rejeição. Afinal, ela tem sido o rosto nas propagandas de marcas como Calvin Klein, Tommy Hillfinger, Stella McCartney, Dolce & Gabbana e Gap. Suas pernas longas e rosto anguloso, olhos azuis amendoados e cabelos louros têm adornado cartazes em Times Square e além.

Picture Me começou como um despretensioso diário caseiro em vídeo. O ex-manorado de Ziff e codiretor Ole Schell frequentemente a acompanhava aos trabalhos, e por ser um graduado em ciências cinematográficas sempre pareceu natural que levasse a câmera para dar um sentido ao mundo surreal e isolado em que se encontravam.

Há também cenas comuns do dia-a-dia, fofocas, discussões. O processo poderia simplesmente ter exposto um indústria tão falsa e superficial quanto uma taça de Angel Delight (uma sobremesa instantânea dos anos 60 que diziam ter o gosto de morangos com creme), mas o que veio à tona ao longo de cinco anos de e centenas de horas de filmagens foi algo mais escuro, subversivo.

"Eu estava trabalhando, sendo paga para fazer um trabalho, ser sociável, ser agradável de maneira natural," recorda Ziff. " Entrementes, eu estava introduzindo Ole para que ele pudesse filmar os outros sem que fosse percebido." Nem sempre dava certo. Em um show privado da Gucci na casa do restauranteur Mr Chow, ele foi percebido por guardas armados, conduzido a uma cela na casa e teve a câmera confiscada.

Filmando com um orçamento apertado, editando no apartamento de Schell, eles fizeram um dos melhores filmes sobre o mundo das modelos e um retrato honesto de uma indústria erguida sobre artifícios.

O filme concluído, que teve a première em Nova York, e já está ganhando prêmios nos circuitos dos festivais cinematográficos, é um raro e perturbador olhar para o que deve ser uma das poucas indústrias desregulamentadas do mundo ocidental.

Uma garota de 16 anos está numa sessão de fotos em Paris. Ela é inexperiente como modelo e está desacompanhada dois pais ou de sua agência. Ela deixa o estúdio para ir ao banheiro e encontra o fotógrafo - "um fotógrafo muito, muito famoso, provavelmente um dos maiores do mundo", segundo Ziff. - no corredor. Ele começa mexendo em suas roupas. "Mas isto é comum", diz Ziff. "As pessoas lhe tocam o tempo todo" Seu pescoço, ou seus seios. Não é estranho neste meio ser tratada daquela maneira.

"Então, subitamente, ele põe as mãos entre suas pernas e a ataca sexualmente". "Ela não tem experiência com garotos, nem mesmo chegou a ser beijada", diz Ziff. "Ela ficou tão chocada que apenas permaneceu lá, e não disse nada a ningúem. Ele apenas olhou para ela a saiu andando, e terminaram a sessão de fotos. E ela nunca contou a ninguém."

Mas essa entrevista foi excluída da versão final de Picture Me. A modelo havia concordado com a inclusão, mas na véspera da première em Nova York ela mudou de idéia e ficou com medo das repercussões. Pediu a Ziff e Schell que não usassem o material. Ziff ficou desapontada, mas não se sentiu confortável traindo uma amiga em um indústria onde as mulheres, ela crê, são traídas o tempo todo.

"Há muita vergonha em contar uma história daquelas, mas é algo largamente disseminado", diz Ziff. "Não acontece na frente de qualquer um, mas na escuridão de lugares escondidos." Muitas garotas com quem conversei tem uma hisótira parecida, mas nenhuma delas fala sobre o assunto. É tudo escondido porque as pessoas ficam envergonhadas e porque a gente dessa indústria que faz essas coisas é muito mais poderosa, e a modelo é totalmente dispensável. Ela poderia estar fora em dois anos."

Ziff não é ingênua. Ela se beneficiou de todas as maneiras do negócio em que trabalhou por 13 anos. Ganhou uma quantidade de dinheiro que outros na casa dos vinte e poucos anos nem sonha ter e viajou por todo o mundo.

Ela também sabe que a moda lida com idéias em torno de fantasia e sexo. É uma indústria muito mais referida no despir-se do que no vestir-se, a muito sobre o que está subjacente do que no topo.

A indústria sempre teve um lado predatório. Qualquer um abordo na rua por um homem de meia idade que lhe pergunte se desejaria ser modelo pensaria duas vezes antes de fornecer seus dados (Razão pela qual as olheiras das agências são sempre mulheres).

Existe algo inerentemente íntimo sobre todo o negócio da fotografia de moda - as lentes, que tudo veem, o sujeito exposto, o fotógrafo poderoso. O que é chocante, ouvindo Ziff, é o quão prevalente, e quão alto a cadeia alimentar da moda, que é a exploração sexual, chega.

"Garotas vulneráveis estão sendo introduzidas em um meio ambiente predatório", diz Ziff. "O interesse da agência nem sempre é o melhor para a garota, e se ela estiver em uma situação de exposição, nem sempre tem a quem recorrer."

Um sindicato, ela crê, poderia dar alguma proteção. Ela faz parte de um pequeno grupo de modelos que começa a falar da indústria e quebrar o silêncio ao estilo mafioso, omertà.

Algumas começaram com blogs nos quais falam francamente sobre suas vidas além do próximo desfile. Há 18 meses, duas modelos residentes no Reino Unido, Victoria Keon-Cohen e Dunja Knezevic, buscaram aconselhamento da Equity e fundaram o próprio sindicato.

O qua preocupa Ziff é a existência de uma expectativa de que as modelos sentem-se confortáveis usando sua sexualidade. Frequentemente elas podem se sentir pressionadas a ceder, porque estão sendo muito bem pagas. Um vez, Ziff disse, ela chegou a ganhar US$ 150.000 por dia. "Fiz fotos nua, totalmente nua. Eles vendem a coisa para você assim: "Aqui está o grande artista, e ele quer tirar fotos suas".

"Eu tiver de desligar a voz em minha cabeça que dizia: "Você quer mesmo fazer isso?" Quando se está recebendo muito dinheiro e quer parecer realmente "cool", não se tem vontade de mostrar nenhuma resistência em ceder".

Mas, ao final do dia, eu costuma pensar: qual a diferença entre fazer fotos de lingerie para a Calvin Klein e ser uma stripper (alguém que posa sem roupa)? Obviamente você está violando seus princípios. Até aonde eu qero ir? Quanto eu quero mostrar por um cheque gordo? A indústria tornou-se crescentemente sexualizada, e as linhas entre o que é aceitável ou não estão menos nítidas.

Algumas agências estão empregando garotas cada vez mais novas. Ziff se recorda de uma modelo sentada nos bastidores de um show brincando com um livrinho de colorir. "É um relacionamento inerentemente desbalanceado, inclusive hierarquicamente, quando se põe em contato uma menina de 15 anos e um homem de 45 que está tentando criar uma imagem sexualizada. Isso é procurar encrenca."

"O lado sexual dessa indústria pode ir além das fotos, diz Ziff. Quando se está trabalhando em um nível mais elevado, não há separação entre vida privada e trabalho. Você deve ir a certas festas e conversar a fim de conseguir contatos ou negócios. Há uma pressão para tomar uma bebida com alguém por um motivo não-declarado e não ofendê-lo porque eles podem contratá-la para uma campanha de US$ 100 mil.

Eles têm o poder. No passado, ela se viu em situações delicadas com as quais gostaria de ter lidado de maneira diferente. Ela conta a história de uma modelo de 16 anos que reclamou quando um fotógrafo de 45 anos passou-lhe a mão. "Sua agência disse-lhe que ela deveria ter dormido com ele". "Imagine ser uma modelo do leste europeu, da Letônia", diz Ole, "que mal fala inglês e está sustentando a família que ficou lá" "Imagine seu grau de dependência".

Sara Ziff tinha 14 anos quando começou como modelo. Sue terceiro teste foi em East Village, Nova York. "Nós tpinhamos de ir uma por uma. O fotógrafo disse que queria me ver sem a blusa. Então, ele me disse que ainda estava difícil me avaliar para o trabalho, de modo que eu poderia tirar as calças. E lá estava eu, com uma calcinha do Mickey Mouse e um sutiã esportivo. Eu ainda nem tinha seios. "Nós poderemos ter de ver você sem o sutiã," ele me disse. Era como um tubarão me circundando, andando em volta, me olhando de cima a baixo, sem dizer nada. Eu fiz o que ele mandou. Eu estava ansiosa para ser aprovada e conseguir o trabalho. "Eu não conhecia outro melhor".

Garotas adolescentes, diz ela, estão sendo convencidas a posar de maneira sexy quando elas ainda nem sabem o que isso significa. Ela se recorda de ser uma "adolescente virginal", posando inocentemente quando não se sentia nem remotamente sexy.

"As imagens foram reveladas e eram praticamente pornográficas. O que o fotógrafo viu não era o que e sentia. Não tinha nada a ver com aquela garota de 14 anos e o que ela estava sentindo, e tudo a ver com o que aquela pessoa por trás da câmera projetava nela.

Por todo o seu sucesso como modelo, ela estava já ganhando mais que o pai, um neurobiólogo universitário, já aos 20 anos - Ziff era provavemente uma intrusa na indústria. Às vezes, ser bela e inteligente não parece ser uma combinação invejável. Ser modelo não foi uma profissão que ela buscou conscientemente. Ela foi seguida em Nova York, perto da Union Square por uma fotógrafa quando voltava da escola. "Já me havia acontecido ante, mas eu nunca dera bola. Aquela vez foi diferente. A fotógrafa estava com o marido, e um carrinho de bebê, e de alguma forma isso a fez parecer menos duvidosa. "Em uma semana Ziff já havia tido oferta de fotos para uma revista na Jamaica, e um show para Cavin Klein.

Na escola, ela torcou aulas por trabalho de modelo. "Eu gnhava em uma tarde alguns milhares de dólares. Eu, que nunca havia ganhado mais de um dólar da fada dos dentes, então é fácil imaginar quão excitante era aquilo tudo.

Arnonia é que as mulheres em Picture Me podem estar ganhando muito, mas parecem ter pouco controle das próprias vidas. "A pessoa se torna uma boneca viva", diz Ziff. Todas as decisões são tomadas por outras pessoas. Ela permanecem de certa forma como as garotas que eram quando começaram, aconselhadas a não pensar no futuro, ansiosas por ter o mesmo corpo esguio de quando eram adolescentes.

Picture Me mostra Ziff transformada de uma leve, confiante moça de 18 anos, intoxicada com a quantidade de dinheiro que estava ganhando, numa pessoa exaurida, emocional e fisicamente, antes de chegar aos 20 e poucos anos.

"No final," diz, "eu era uma concha". A rotina era de vinte horas diárias, No filme pode-se vê-la pedindo um dia de folga, que lhe é negado. "Às vezes, ou outros se esquecem que você é humana", diz. Ao final da temporada, ela pesa menos de 50 kg, simplesmente por pura falta de tempo para se alimentar.

Hoje, aos 27 anos, ela é estudante em tempo integral na Universidade de Cornell, que faz trabalhos de modelo quando pode, se não atrapalharem seus estudos. Ela descreve sua vida hoje como "nerdly" a monástica. "Diferente do meu olho grande, e enorme oportunismo aos 18 anos, talvez eu tenha aprendido que não há atalhos na vida". "Ser modelo me trouxe muita grana e atenção - mas não o tipo de atenção de que se necessita."

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Picture me

Sara Ziff

"We might need to see you without your bra, he told me. I was 14. I didn't even have breasts yet"

As a top teen model, Sara Ziff was earning the kind of money her school friends could only dream of. But there was a price to pay. She tells Louise France why she has made a documentary about what really happens behind the cameras.

Louise France The Observer

A beautiful woman sits in front of a video camera. Her name is Sena Cech and she is a fashion model. Her tone is matter-of-fact, as though what she's about to describe is commonplace in the industry in which she works.

The scene: a casting with a photographer, one of the top names in his profession. Halfway through the meeting Cech is asked to strip. She does as instructed and takes off her clothes. Then the photographer starts undressing as well. "Baby - can you do something a little sexy," he tells her.

The photographer's assistant, who is watching, eggs her on. What's supposed to be the casting for a high-end fashion shoot turns into something more like an audition for a top-shelf magazine. The famous photographer demands to be touched sexually. "Sena - can you grab his cock and twist it real hard," his assistant tells her. "He likes it when you squeeze it real hard and twist it."

"I did it," she shrugs, looking into the video camera. "But later I didn't feel good about it." The following day she hears that the job is hers if she wants it. She turns it down. "I didn't like the way the casting had gone. If the casting was that sexual I was sure the job would be really sexual and gross." The photographer never offered her work again.

This is the ugly, sleazy side of the modelling industry, the side few insiders like to talk about. It's one of the most secretive businesses in the world, which is ironic when you consider that it is also one of the most pervasive.

Its stars are some of the most recognised icons of our time, household names whose bodies are frequently emblazoned across 40ft-high billboards, yet apart from the occasional flurry of publicity about anorexia or drug-taking, outsiders know surprisingly little about the multimillion-pound business which profits from some of world's most beautiful women.

Models rarely give interviews, and if they do they're as studiedly anodyne and vague as Premiership footballers quizzed outside the changing room after a match.

Sena Cech is one of a handful of models who has decided to talk publicly about the seedy, unglamorous and, on occasion, abusive side to her profession for a new documentary, Picture Me. The woman behind the film is Sara Ziff, a catwalk model turned documentary maker.

Ziff makes an unusual whistleblower. She's made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the modelling business. Her motivation for speaking out has nothing to do with revenge or failure (when I ask her what it's like to be rejected for a job because of the way you look, it's clear this has not happened to her very often). She's been the face of brands like Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Stella McCartney, Dolce & Gabbana and Gap.

Her long limbs and angular cheekbones, almond-shaped blue eyes and blonde hair have adorned hoardings in Times Square and beyond. She's strutted down the catwalk, eyes blank, unsmiling, for all the top designers from Marc Jacobs to Louis Vuitton, Gucci to Chanel.

Picture Me began as a quirky homespun video diary. Ziff's former boyfriend and co-director Ole Schell would often accompany her on jobs, and because he was a film-school graduate it seemed natural to take along the camera equipment in order to make sense of the surreal, insular world in which they found themselves.

The earlier parts of the film reflect the lighter side of the industry such as the camaraderie among the models and the buzz of a catwalk show. Schell would also document their private moments: arguments about money because Ziff was earning Monopoly amounts and he could not compete; Ziff in the bath after a long day at a shoot.

The process might simply have highlighted an industry as fake and frothy as a bowl of Angel Delight, but what emerged over the course of five years of filming and hundreds of hours of footage was something darker, more subversive. They started giving the camera to fellow models, putting them on the other side of the lens and giving them a chance to speak. Gradually the couple became less like innocent home-movie makers and more like undercover reporters.

They sit in Ziff's minimalist apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and recall the years of filming. They broke up during the editing process but they still seem to be good friends. Ziff is tall, skinny, though she says she weighs more than she ever has done before. There's something instantly arresting about the way she looks, even though she's unmade-up and dressed down, in black leggings, white shirt.

"I was at work, being paid to do a job, be social, effortlessly cheery," Ziff recalls. "Meanwhile I was sneaking in Ole so that he could film without other people realising it." It didn't always go to plan.

Schell describes being routinely thrown out of shows by notoriously publicity-shy design houses. At a private Gucci show at the Los Angeles home of the restaurateur Mr Chow, he came to the attention of the armed guards and was escorted to a holding cell in the house, his camera confiscated.

Shooting on a shoestring budget, editing in Schell's apartment, they end up with one of the best films about the world of modelling and an honest portrayal of an industry built on artifice. The final film, which premiered in New York and is already picking up awards on the film festival circuit, is at times a rare and unsettling look at what must be one of the few unregulated industries in the western world.

A 16-year-old model is on a photo shoot in Paris. She has very little experience of modelling and is unaccompanied by her agency or parents. She leaves the studio to go to the bathroom and meets the photographer - "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names", according to Ziff - in the hallway.

He starts fiddling with her clothes. "But you're used to this," says Ziff. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then suddenly he puts his hands between her legs and sexually assaults her. "She has no experience of boys, she hasn't even been kissed," says Ziff. "She was so shocked she just stood there and didn't say anything. He just looked at her and walked away and they did the rest of the shoot. And she never told anyone."

This interview didn't make the final version of Picture Me. The model had agreed to be included but the day before the premiere in New York she changed her mind and became frightened about the repercussions.

She begged Ziff and Schell not to use the material. Ziff was disappointed but she didn't feel comfortable betraying a friend in an industry where women, she believes, are betrayed all the time.

"There is a lot of shame in telling a story like that, but it is really widespread," says Ziff. "It doesn't happen in front of anyone. It happens in the dark recesses. Pretty much every girl I have talked to has a story like it, but no one talks about it.

It's all under the radar because people are embarrassed and because the people in the industry who are doing these things are much more powerful, and the model is totally disposable. She could be gone in two years."

Ziff is not naive. She has benefited in all kinds of ways from the business in which she's worked for 13 years. She has earned the kind of money other twentysomethings can only dream of and travelled all around the world.

She also knows that fashion plays with ideas around fantasy and sex. It's an industry that is as much about undressing as dressing up, as much about what's underneath as what's on top. The model's job is to look into the camera lens and make a woolly, oversize cardigan look sexy. It was ever thus.

The industry has always had a predatory side. Anyone approached in the street by a middle-aged man and asked if they'd like to be a model would think twice about giving him their details (which is the reason model scouts are generally women).

There is something inherently intimate about the whole business of fashion photography - the all-seeing lens, the exposed subject, the powerful photographer. What's shocking, listening to Ziff, is how prevalent, and how far up the fashion food chain, sexual exploitation goes.

"Vulnerable girls are being put into a potentially predatory environment," says Ziff. "What's in the agency's interest is not always best for the girl, and if she's in a compromising situation, she doesn't necessarily have anyone to turn to."

A union, she believes, could provide some protection. She is part of a small coterie of models who are beginning to speak out about the industry and break the mafia-like silence. A few have started blogs on which they talk frankly about their lives beyond the next fitting.

Eighteen months ago, two models based in Britain, Victoria Keon-Cohen and Dunja Knezevic, sought advice from Equity and set up their own union. It campaigns for better working conditions, holiday and sickness pay, protection in case of injury.

What alarms Ziff is that there's an expectation that models are comfortable using their sexuality. Often they can feel under pressure to conform, not least because they're being paid a great deal of money. On occasion, Ziff says, she has earned as much as $150,000 a day. "I've done shoots naked, totally naked.

They sell it to you as: 'Here's this great artist and he wants to take your portrait.' I had to switch off the voice in my head that said: 'Do you really want to do this?' When you're being paid a lot of money and you want to appear cool you really don't want to show any resistance to going with it.

"But at the end of the day I used to wonder: what's the difference between doing a shoot in your underwear for Calvin Klein and being a stripper? Obviously you are compromising yourself. How far am I willing to go? How much am I willing to show for a big fat cheque?"

The industry has become increasingly sexualised, and the lines between what is acceptable and what isn't have become more blurred. Naked models inside the pages of a magazine or on a billboard are ubiquitous.

Add to this the fact that in their bid to find models that have the "ideal" model shape - flat chests, boyish hips - some agencies are hiring younger and younger girls. Ziff recalls one model sitting backstage at the shows playing with a colouring book. "It is an inherently unbalanced and hierarchical relationship when you pair a 15-year-old girl with a 45-year-old man who is trying to create a sexualised image. You are asking for trouble."

The sexual side of the industry can go beyond the shoots, says Ziff. "When you are working at a higher level there is no separation between life and work. You are expected to go to certain parties and schmooze. There is a pressure to have a drink with someone with an ulterior motive and not offend them because they may book you for a $100,000 campaign. They have the power."

In the past, she has found herself in compromising situations that she wishes she'd dealt with differently. She tells the story of a 16-year-old model who complained when a 45-year-old photographer made a pass at her. "Her agency said she should have slept with him."

"Imagine being an eastern European model from Latvia," says Ole, "who can barely speak English and is supporting a family back home. Imagine how compromised they are."

Sara Ziff was 14 when she first began modelling. Her third casting was in the East Village in New York. "We had to go in one by one. The photographer said he wanted to see me without my shirt on. Then he told me that it was still hard to imagine me for the story so could I take my trousers off. I was standing there in a pair of Mickey Mouse knickers and a sports bra. I didn't even have breasts yet. 'We might need to see you without your bra,' he told me.

It was like he was a shark circling me, walking around and around, looking me up and down without saying anything. I did what he told me to. I was just eager to be liked and get the job. I didn't know any better." Teenage girls, she says, are being persuaded to pose in a sexual way when they don't even know what it means yet.

She recalls being a "virginal teenager" and posing innocently when she didn't feel remotely sexy. "The images came out and they were practically pornographic.

What the photographer saw was not what I felt. It had nothing to do with that 14-year-old and what she was feeling and everything to do with what the person behind the camera projected onto her."

For all her success as a model - she was out-earning her father, a university neurobiologist, by the time she was 20 - Ziff was probably always an outsider in the industry. Put it this way, she's the first model I've met who quotes Joan Didion.

Her parents are academics who never approved of her career and it's possible she thought too much about the wider significance of what she was doing to really enjoy it herself (she was taking courses in women's studies while at the same time modelling couture). For once, being beautiful and brainy doesn't seem such an enviable combination.

Modelling wasn't a profession she sought for herself. She was scouted in New York near Union Square by a female photographer when she was walking home from school. "It had happened to me before but I had never followed up on it. This seemed different.

The photographer was with her husband, pushing a baby in a stroller, and somehow this made her seem potentially less sleazy." Within a week she was being offered a magazine shoot in Jamaica and a show for Calvin Klein. At school she juggled modelling with lessons. "I'd earn a few thousand dollars in an afternoon. I'd never earned more than a dollar from the tooth fairy, so as you can imagine this was all pretty exciting."

When she decided to become a professional model instead of going to college her parents were dismayed. ("For my parents it was not if I'd go to college, it was which one of five colleges I would go to.") Modelling was, Ziff admits, a way to rebel against her academic background. At the age of 18 she left home; two years later she'd earned enough to buy her own loft apartment.

The irony is that the women in Picture Me may be earning large amounts of money - Schell laughingly recalls piles of cash like you see in movie scenes - but they seem to have little power over their lives.

"You become this living doll," says Ziff. Every decision is made by someone else. They remain somehow like the girls they were when they first entered the profession, encouraged not to think about their futures, anxious to remain the same body shape they were when they were teenagers. There's a suggestion that some models lose weight because it's the only aspect of their lives that they have any control over.

Picture Me shows Ziff turn from a breezy, confident 18-year-old intoxicated by the amount of money she is making into someone exhausted, emotionally and physically, before she hits her mid-20s.

"By the end," she says, "I was a shell." Twenty-hour days were routine. In the film we watch her begging to be allowed a day off and being told that she's not allowed. "Sometimes people forget you're human," she says. We see her haggard and tearful, her skin spotty, her hair dragged back and greasy. By the end of the show season she weighs less than 100lb, not because she's been starving herself but because there's literally no time to eat.

Teenage girls will have seen Ziff in glossy magazines and wished they could look like her, but Ziff is filmed leafing through the same images in her local newsagent and saying how dreadful she thinks she looks. It seems the industry which makes the rest of us feel insecure and imperfect leaves its own stars feeling the same way.

She's 27 years old now, a full-time student at Cornell University who models when she can fit it in around her studies. She's with an agency she likes. Her portfolio may have paid her student fees but the cool loft apartment has been swapped for a one-bedroom flat, the catwalks for the college library.

She describes her life now as nerdy and monkish. "Contrary to my wide-eyed, rather opportunistic outlook at 18, perhaps I learned that there are no short cuts in life," she tells me in an email after the interview.

"Modelling brought some money and attention - but not the kind of attention you'd want."

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