» Model City
Sandra Omo despairs of the models who give up their career too easily
Limitations, they are everywhere. In everything you do or try to do, there is always that ‘something’ trying to tell you, ‘you can’t do it’, or in a moral form, ‘you should not do it’. Often, limitations are so moral and so logical that we find an excuse to fall for it. I have met countless people who failed without even trying at that big dream they once had. Why? There were limitations everywhere. It seemed logical to pull out and do something less. Each time I meet a case like this, within me I am dying to ask these people: “If you could believe so strongly in the impossibilities, why didn’t you just believe in the possibility?”
Yesterday, it was this, almost, successful model friend of mine that got me thinking. She had this contract and done all the fashion weeks in the world, only to get discouraged because of an incident that happened between her and her agency. Thinking they were taking her for a ride, and that this whole modelling career thing was not going to work anyway, and that the agency was just going to use and dump her, she backed out and settled for something else. It was not backing out of the agency that was the mistake; rather it was backing out of her dreams. I could hear the regret in her voice when she finally said, “I knew it was not going to work.” No honey, you feared it was not going to work. How could she have known? She did not even try.
It pains me when I see models ban themselves from certain castings just because they think they know they will not be chosen. This is very common when it comes to height and race. I invited a model I had just met recently, for a casting for a fashion show. But, like a lot of models, she smiled and said “Thanks but they will not pick me because am not tall enough.”
“Every time I hear or see models behave like this, I ask myself, where is that outgoing, unrelenting character models are supposed to have?”
“How do you know?“ I asked. She begins to explain she has attended some before and has never been picked and blah, blah, blah. Yes, but my question is how do you know that this casting today is not going to pick you other than the fact that you are not going to attend at all?
A friend of mine has a networking site where models can apply for castings put up by clients themselves. Statistics show that they get more hits on paid castings, but five times less applications than they receive for non-paid castings. Meaning that many models click on these paid castings, read them and apply for the non-paid ones instead because they feel they will not be chosen or don’t have what it takes.
Every time I hear or see models behave like this, I ask myself, where is that outgoing, unrelenting character models are supposed to have? Or is there a new generation of models who just shy away from opportunities just because they see a few limitations ahead? The generation of models that inspired me are not those who got into it by chance, but those who went after it against all odds. This is my approach. I like to thrive where it seemed impossible, and everything seems impossible if you never try. I have won castings that I should not even qualify for, done jobs that seemed impossible, and these were possible because I summoned up the courage to try. If I never showed up, the impossibilities are endless.
