Photo Shoots
For one of my first big photo shoots, the Vogue team took me to the outskirts of Brooklyn. They were putting me in a feature they do every month that’s like, Hey, you don’t know this girl yet but she’s cool. Trust us. We’re Vogue. They gave off major “cool girl” vibes, and I needed to be friends with them immediately, so when they wanted to photograph me under a bridge that had clearly been roped off, I agreed. Once we were through the layers of plastic sheeting I realized it had been shut down because of a burst pipe. A pipe of what? I guess I’ll find out if and when I develop conditions consistent with radiation poisoning.
Sometimes I like to run around photo shoots all carefree and wild, as a layer of protection. When I stay still and focus all my attention and energy on being the best little model I can be and still I get looks of disappointment and confusion because I don’t look like Kendall Jenner, it hurts my tiny feelings. (You can go your whole life as a happy, sane person, and then Kendall Jenner comes up and you wonder why you want to crawl into a hole and rot. No one should be compared to Kendall Jenner. It’s cruel and unusual.) So I run around a little. I’m not an unphotographable troll! I’m just a little scamp who’s not focused!
When I behave, I find myself in the line of fire for innocuous comments that lodge in my brain and explode like tiny, hateful pipe bombs right before I fall asleep. The photographer for one artsy magazine told me to relax my shoulders, twenty-one times. (I’d always thought my shoulders were fine.) A photographer for a men’s mag asked, “Can we lose the bra?” in a tone that felt as rhetorical as “Can you get that report on my desk by Friday?” When he saw me glance at the monitor, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll slim out your legs.” (I’d always thought my legs were fine.)
I have one piece of advice for photographers. I know you have no reason to listen to advice from me, but please, it’s good for everyone. If you are photographing an actress, or a bride, or a recent graduate who doesn’t have the jaded, knowing sensibility of a model, please just take lots of pictures and say lots of nice things. None of you shoot on film anymore! It costs you nothing to just keep snapping away and shouting praise! It’s like teaching a little kid to hit a baseball. You don’t stand there and stare at him like, This little chump isn’t even using a regulation bat. You throw the ball and say “good job,” and eventually he hits one. That technique won’t help A-Rod improve his batting average, but I’m not A-Rod—I’m the little kid with the Styrofoam bat who can’t see ’cause the helmet’s too big.
Paparazzi
Generally speaking (knock on wood) I don’t have many problems with paparazzi. Occasionally I’ll see a photo of myself online that I didn’t know was being taken. It’s unsettling. Usually, I’m just worried I got caught picking my nose. So far, so good, but keep me in your prayers!
When Up in the Air came out, there was a period where some paparazzi staked out my apartment. Of course, I didn’t know this for a while. The first time I spotted a paparazzo was in the basement of an Ikea in Burbank. I’d gone to get some storage boxes (the all-time greatest stress-relieving activity), and about half an hour into my shopping trip I looked up from my cart and saw a man taking photos of me.
Okay, I thought, so this is it, this is the first time this happens.
I put my throw pillows into the cart (yes, I know I was there to get storage boxes; perhaps you don’t understand how Ikea works) and walked over to him. He put his camera down. He looked bewildered but not defensive, like this wasn’t normal, but he didn’t anticipate a Colin Farrell situation.
I pulled on the sleeves of my hoodie. “Hi. Um . . . how did you . . .” Know I’d be here? Find me? It all sounded so espionage. He knew what I meant.
“Oh, I was just in here.”
I knew that didn’t sound right, but I was so out of my element, I just accepted that he happened to be in the basement of Ikea with his long-lens camera at the same time I was.
He nodded sympathetically. “Oh right, you’re new to the game.”
Ew.
I wasn’t offended in a righteous indignation way, like, My life is not some game! It was just a cringey thing to say.
I suppressed an eye roll and said, “Right, so . . . what happens now? Are you gonna, like, follow me around the store?”
“If I can get a good shot of you now, I’ll just leave, no problem. I promise I won’t follow you home.”
Follow me home. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Letting this guy take my picture so that he would go away seemed like the path of least resistance, so I went back to my cart and stood there.
“Grab something off the shelf, and you can look up like you just spotted me. Don’t smile or anything, you can look annoyed.”