Modeling is one of the most exclusive professions, in which thousands of young people are willing to do whatever it takes to walk on the catwalk. It is a world where only the image, the aesthetics and the clothes that are worn matter.
Victoire Maçon Dauxerre is a 23-year-old girl who became one of the 20 most important models in France and who dared to denounce, in a book, the mistreatment, dehumanization and anorexia prevalent in the world of fashion.
The newspaper The nation from Argentina interviewed the Model and below we leave you some fragments that we found interesting:
-And when you signed the contract, what did they tell you?
-That I was very beautiful, but that I needed to lose weight to fit into a size 0. My hip measurements were 92 cm, and they asked me to be 87. I had two months to lose weight and arrive well at Fashion Week in NY. And I became anorexic: I ate only three apples a day, I lost 10 kilos and reached my requested size. I traveled and shared an apartment with two other models, who didn’t talk to me because they were jealous that I was the skinniest. The more weight I lost, the more successful I was at work: I was taken for 22 shows in Milan and Paris. I made it to the top 20 models of the year.
-Did you not realize that you had an eating disorder?
-Yes and no, I denied it. Fashion turns you into an object, and you are just a hanger whose clothes have to fit well according to the criteria of designers, agencies and photographers. You have to be skinny no matter what; either you don’t eat or you take cocaine, which I wasn’t going to do. But I even tried to commit suicide and it was like a cry for help. It was common: the models around me ate when a camera appeared during fashion shows and then they all went together to vomit in the bathroom. And in the apartments that you share with other models from around the world, envy and betrayal are common: a model friend of mine had a casting and her two roommates – two Russian models – gave her dog treats so that it would break down and have I had to take him urgently to the vet and couldn’t make it to the casting.
-What are the castings like?
-At the Vuitton casting they asked us to parade only with a thong and high heels. They looked at us as if we were pieces of meat. And when I did the Chanel one, Karl Lagerfeld didn’t choose me because he said that “Chanel doesn’t photograph women with breasts,” and I had medium breasts. And all women have breasts! It was also normal that during a photographic production, the assistants gave lunch to everyone except the models, because “models don’t eat.”
Victoire Maçon Dauxerre’s story is a clear and powerful denunciation of what happens in the world of the catwalk. Her book and her experiences did not fall on deaf ears, and the French government began requiring all models to submit a health record before going on the runway that includes their weight and muscle mass. However, I believe that psychological evaluations should also be included as they are done in other high-risk professions and modeling is undoubtedly one of them.
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