Model’s life no easy feet
Women today are behind the wheel, building companies, raising families, outsmarting the room — and, in the modeling world, even being booked one body part at a time.
In modern advertising, models are no longer hired only for a face or a full figure. To sell everything from hair products to thigh creams, brands can now book specialists known for standout legs, upper thighs or other highly specific features.
Modeling agencies have turned this niche into a business of its own, offering talent with camera-ready ankles, hands, scalps, smiles and more. If a product needs a perfect close-up, there is likely a model for that exact part.
Selling shoes, for example, does not require settling for ordinary feet. Advertisers can instead hire a foot model with the graceful lines and polished toes of a dancer.
The work can be surprisingly lucrative. One in-demand parts model, whose legs and lower body have appeared across monthly magazines in ads for stockings, nail polish, body lotion, hair removal products, shorts, lingerie, razors and swimwear, said the bookings keep coming: “So much work that I can’t handle it.”
Those great legs climbed up to her earrings. She received me strictly in the john, saying, “When horse trainers want to tone muscles of their thoroughbreds, they run them in the surf. Icy, salty water is the best toner. Summers it’s the beach. Winter, I stand in the shower and my hose attachment shpritzes water against my legs.”
Hand it to her
Hand model Martha: “It’s 24-hour care. More babying than other parts of your body.”
She offered her wet wrist to shake amid a dozen bottles of nail colors, oils, cotton, files, emery boards, scissors, nippers, lotions, orange sticks, cuticle cream, base coat, sealer, fast drying spray and surgical equipment.
“I do my nails daily. Reapplied polish eight times one day in back of a cab. Oval was popular, now it’s squared tips. Housewives want pink with half moons showing. For glamour it’s rounded and pearlized.”
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She flicked the light switch with her elbow, dialed the phone via a pencil’s eraser, manipulated a girdle with the balls of oiled cuticles, creamed incessantly with something her mom cooks up from cocoa butter, and carries in her evening bag.
Best tressed
Hair model Pat: “Shampoo every other night so it doesn’t get limp, stringy, lose bounce. Sundays oil treatment. Nightly brush with a special English pack of natural bristles set in hard rubber. Stiff nylon creates electricity, which snaps hairs off. Never brush or comb when hair’s wet. Breaks the hair. Forget sun. Never leave hair uncovered or it can burn. Use only rubber tip bobbies that don’t tear. Get a French teasing comb which has soft teeth.
“Also allow an hour and a half to dress hair for work and same amount to get it undressed for bed.”
Foot models require an extra encyclopedia. It’s corns off toes, callouses off heels and clumsy guys off their hoofs.
First rule? Dangle in soapy water. Elevate it to shrink its size. Prop against a wall, stick them up for 10 minute intervals, or the flesh puffs up around it like yeast. Otherwise, they may have to cut you physically out of your shoe.”
The foot model’s one wish?
“To sit more!”
ENGRAVED on a Long Island tombstone: Women come into your life with a roar. Noisy, excitable, unpredictable. And then — when they leave — they take your house.
Maybe possibly could be only in New York, kids, only in New York.