After quitting her previous unexciting fashion job last summer, the day finally came for Sarah Klymkiw to start a new job, in a model agency. Beauty and the blemish Sometimes I wonder if I make my life more dramatic than it has to be, perhaps that’s why I’m never happy and always on the pursuit for something better. The drama keeps the dream alive. So, with the joking comparisons to my life being like an Ugly Betty moment, in some respects I really cannot argue.
A spot surfaced on my face the day before I was due to start my job at the model agency. Not wanting to brag, but normally I do not get spots; my face is generally clear despite the London smog, red wine drinking and the smoking of roll-ups - what can I say, I must have good genes. But this spot, one of those spots that never truly rears its ugly head, but just glows a striking shade of red with an anti-climax peak in the middle of my face, was not the look I was going for when planning my first day outfit, especially knowing that I would be working for the beautiful people. This could only be a sign, a sign of my job being similar to that of a certain Ugly Betty minus the braces and glasses and migraine-inducing taste in clothes. Who wants to be perfect?I have never felt inferior in any way. This is not a statement to proclaim my perfection as I recognise my flaws and accept them for making them me. I do not believe I have a big head but rather a well proportioned one, my thighs and rear could be a bit more in proportion but as a curvy girl I’m not going to have sleepness nights. I feel comfortable in my own skin and have never felt that the way I look is ever an issue in the workplace. Some days I do wonder why I arranged an ensemble in a particular way, but I put this down to my not being an early morning person, thus affecting my vision and general ability to make a clothing decision before any caffeine has been consumed, but ultimately I like what I like and like the way I am and I work hard at what I do. I’m by no means perfect and I don’t think I’d ever want to be. There is always room for improvement and a new challenge only fuels my desire to work on my skills and my understanding. I’ve never felt threatened by other people in the workplace, only admiring those that do their work well, enjoy it, balance it with a well-rounded life outside and do not take themselves too seriously. I respect a passion and enthusiasm to learn and improve. I’m well aware of the fashion industry being an industry built on visual preconceptions so turning up on my first day with the monstrosity that looked to take over my face was perhaps my pores’ way of sticking two fingers up at the fact that I was now about to enter the world of all things superficial and bitchy. As I walked up Old Street to the studio I looked up to a billboard advertising a programme called The Agency with a quote ‘We Sell Flesh’, Becky, Model Booker. My stomach turned. The blame gameAfter four days of being subjected to conversations of how a model’s shoulders were all wrong, certain models being too skinny, too fat, pandering to egos, hissy fits, the trading of models as if they are nothing more than a product began to take it’s toll on my soul. Dealing with models getting lost and turning up late much to the dismay of the client and the formality of the ‘mwah mwah’, I became seriously depressed when I turned on Question Time to a debate about the Size Zero. The furore of London Fashion Week had again brought up the issue of models starving themselves to be perfect. It made me angry, angry that I was suddenly a part of this and amazed by some of the comments being made. It is an insult to any thinking person to blame the fashion industry for projecting an image that forces models and average folk, like you and me, to believe that to be accepted we have to look a certain way. Our changing body shapes over the past century have evolved through diet and lifestyle and not because of fashion. To think otherwise is to overestimate the power of the fashion industry and underestimate the impact of peer pressure, fast food/ready meals and a faster pace of life where families no longer have the time to sit down and eat meals at the dining table every night and where working through your lunch break is the norm. The general comment made by one politician that our body shapes are getting smaller could not be further from the truth and is in fact hugely inaccurate. I believe the weekly gossip and celebrity magazines are more to blame with their focus on photographing ‘celebrities’ in all their natural glory whilst highlighting their flaws with inappropriate comments that only promote a negative obsession with the image. This is not the fashion industry and this certainly is not Ugly Betty. My styleUltimately I am disappointed that I should have to be a part of this debate when I believe beauty to not be whether someone has the right-shaped shoulders or a svelte-like figure but a confidence and a personality, an opinion and a sense of own style and self-worth. Fashion, for me, is not to make Question Time and make a negative ‘political’ statement on the size of the models but should focus on the way clothes make the average person feel. And so, after my rant, I’ve remembered why I like fashion and realise that I feel I am not actually working in fashion but supplying a photographer, a stylist, a designer with a model to showcase their creations, to make their statements. I realise that I want to create and make my own statement. I now feel forced to re-evaluate everything all over again only three weeks in, not by choice but rather regret - much to the dismay of friends that thought my warblings and moaning regarding work were over, at least for the time-being! A job to some is just a job. To me it is important to enjoy every day and to feel good about what I do - after all, I am not saving lives, let’s get some perspective. But I still have a strong desire to contribute something good and to go home at the end of the day with some sense of satisfaction. I feel as though I hastily jumped in with no real thought to whether I wanted to be a model booker or knowing much about the model industry as a whole. The more I know the more I dislike and question whether fashion is really all it’s cracked up to be. This is perhaps the scariest question I’ve ever had to ask myself - after all, this is all I’ve ever known I’ve wanted to do. My stubborn spot is still here and so are my stubborn feelings of an industry that sells the beautiful. I now have to have a long hard think about whether I can sleep at night knowing that I am not fulfilling what I believe to be the true beauty of fashion and moving away from what attracted me to it in the first place, with my spot cream neglectfully still in the drawer and my spot still a-glowing. | 
