It all began when my mother pushed an advertisement 'Models Wanted' in front of me and said that if I didn't get a job soon' there would be trouble. Mother had the idea that after disgracing the family by dropping out of Teachers College I should do something respectable like office work, etc. instead of bumming around in hospital kitchens and dishwashing in restaurants. After a lot of pushing from Mother, who had always hoped that someday I would do something glamorous and fulfil her dreams. I decided to take the plunge. After all it could be a laugh, even glamorous, and plenty of men had said that I was alright to look at.

So off I went to enrol myself at a modelling school for charm, elegance, deportment, poise, posture, makeup, hairdos, fingerpaint, eyelashes, dollybird techniques and modelling. Of course there was the small investment of $50, which Mother paid eagerly, thinking how nice it would be to see her daughter in Women's Weekly, and how it would impress all the relatives and show them that I was not a hopeless dropout after all.

By now I was quite eager and looking forward to hitting the Big Time and money. After about two weeks of applying makeup and learning how to catwalk (rolling down the stage like a dummy on wheels) and how to smile - sexy smile, cheeky smile outrageous smile etc. in preparation for whatever mood the advertising agent plus the photographer thought would sell his product - one received a diploma and some nice photographs of oneself doing all these things and the promise of success.

I had now entered the Golden Gates of Dolly Bird Land. You even had to practise being filmed in case you ever managed to gel television advertisements, and they had some man there to give us a "screen test". This of course impressed us all so much that we laid on our best performances for him Afterwards I found out that the guy had no film in his camera and they never do for such "screen tests".

Competition Reigns Supreme

Of course not all the girls are accepted, so this made the course very competitive, competition being the most vicious element in the world of Plastic Woman. The big orgasm for these girls would be to Win the Model of the Year award and the one that wins is usually the one who is the most skilful at the art of Dolly Birdism, or she knows the photographer who is the key judge.

Inside the modelling house that I was in a system of hierarchy existed between the girls who had made it as top models and the others. They were held in awe by the rest. Whenever one of these super models came through the door all the girls would oooh! and aaah! with admiration and envy for her brilliant makeup, artistry and gliding catwalk. Yes she had mastered it. It seemed that the bigger the lashes the more attention she could attract. That was the eyelash era of '68. Often girls like this would have years of experience in makeup trickery behind them and they would dedicate their entire life to obeying the commands of King Advertising.

Precious Dolls

Women have this idea that if men make a fuss of you, they must like and respect you. In the modelling and advertising world the men that one associates with make a great deal of fuss over you, and at first you think it is great and you feel like a precious doll. In fact most of them despise you as a master despises his submissive role-playing wife.

And it is the model's role to obey. Once I and two other models were doing a feature for one of Auckland's leading fashion photographers and I suggested changing our position when he didn't seem to be having much success with the lighting, and he yelled back at me: "Just shut up and stand there. You models are supposed to do as you are told and leave the organising to me." My idea was actually superior to his, but because I was a model I had to be beautiful, dumb and obedient to this prick.

So you can see how women are exploited not only because of sexist advertising, but also while they are involved in it, and we wi will never be free from this oppression until we smash sexist advertising and the stereotype roles that it supports.

Getting a Job

The interview I had with a certain photographer went like this: I stood waiting by desk for 10 minutes while he shuffled his papers and chewed gum like a GI, then he looked up and said in a mock American accent: "Well, baby, what can I do for you?"

"I'd like to do modelling."

"So you want to be a model, well baby, I'll tell you straight, it's not all glamour, it's hard work, let's have a look at you," chewing all the time.

"Well baby, not bad, not bad. Turn around, your hips are too big - make them smaller. Turn around. Your eyes are too small, make them bigger. But I'll give you some test shots anyway. How's that eh? I don't have to, mind you." (Kiss my toes).

"Wear a denim shirt open down the front and be here at 8.00 tonight, see you, see you."

These test shots are to see if you are photogenic and any good at putting on an act for the camera.

Then came the phone call from the photographer. "The shots were great baby, great." (Always this endearing term, Baby). "We'll do your first shot tomorrow. Big ad this, big job. You will be wearing $2000 worth of fur, only you will have to make those boobs stick out more - pad them up with something. Okay? And I want that makeup to be perfect - big eyes. Okay?

After standing for about two hours concentrating on a smouldering smile in a $2000 fur next to a $1000 dog and eskimo artifact, the job was done and we all went to dinner in a fast car to a smooth restaurant. This all sounds very glamorous, but it's all part of the business scene and the model doesn't mean a thing to these people except that she has to sell their product. The model is the underdog - for example I was paid $30 for that particular advertisement (four months later), which sounds a lot for two hours work, but the photographer would have received about $400 and the agent about $800.

The amount of money which a firm will spend on advertising a product is endless, for example hiring ten people to stand around blowing bubbles over you in a bath tub for three hours, or getting ten models organised by five in the morning at Bethells Beach to catch the right light which will sell see-through lingerie to all the young sophisticates of Remuera.

Models Don't...

Being a model means being part of the media and this means being accepted and respected by society. They are the ultimate in dolly birds and they perpetuate stereotype role playing and sexism. They are not real women. They don't fart or burp, have underarm hair or vaginal odour, have babies or breasts with milk in them, and they don't feel or think very much about the negro children in the USA who are dying from malnutrition and lead poisoning, or the young Maori girls in homes with nowhere to go and no one to father their babies, and the solo mothers in Glen Innes struggling on $30 a week because their husbands could not face the responsibility of children and breadwinner neurosis. Or the middle-aged women in Oakley suffering from suburban neurosis and the young girls who gaze at glossy pictures of them and get inferiority complex, s because their legs aren't the same shape, and the boys who see these pictures and think that is how women are supposed to look.

For prostituting myself to the capitalist system I got a write up in the local paper "Local girl makes good" style. For protesting against the war in Vietnam when I was 15 I got a write up in the paper "Schoolgirls shame school in scuffle with police at demonstration" style.

The Big Capitalist Brainwash

Yes, advertising will cash in on anything from sex to sell cars to parenthood to sell life insurance. Capitalism means exploit ation, consumerism and pollution.. Capitalism exploits the factory workers who make the products that sexist advertising promotes. Through their greed, fat capitalists pollute our earth, for example by using mercury in a paper bleaching process because it is cheaper. Through their greed thousands of people are slaughtered on the roads because the breweries won't admit that drunken driving causes 90% of road deaths, and I turned on a sexist smile for them in an advertisement for vodka.

If beauty is the earth and the life it gives, the sea when it is not polluted; the seasons, the sun, motherhood; fatherhood, sisterhood; brotherhood and the unity of people, then surely something as anti-life as capitalism and all its advertising must be ugly.

Miriam Cameron