» Model City
Sandra Omo says dealing with rejection is the key to being a strong model
How often does a model have to face
rejection in her career?
The answer is: always! As a model, this is the number one thing you have to be prepared for. The knowledge that you have what the next person does not is the tool that keeps you going.
I cannot count how many castings I have had, but I can count how many jobs I have done. Ask the most successful of models and they will tell you the same. You will get more ‘no’ than ‘yes’, but the good thing is that when you get a ‘yes’, it always boosts your career and proves all the ‘nos’ wrong.
No one handles rejection like models. I can boast of this anywhere. In the industry I have chosen to work in, rejection is part of the business and often it has nothing to do with the model directly. It may be because you do not suit the requirement for the particular job at hand. That is the reason you often find yourself accepted on a later date for another job by the same agency that had turned you down before.
“The knowledge that you have what the next person does not is the tool that keeps you going”
An example I love so much is the story of Miss World 2001. In 2000, she was refused entry into the Face Of Africa modelling competition. According to the organisers, there was everything wrong with her. The blow was so much that she quit modelling. As fate would have it, she came across a pageant organiser who pressured her to attend the casting for the national beauty pageant of her country – Nigeria. Reluctantly, she went along and made it through to the pageant and won it. She then went further – to represent Nigeria in the Miss Universe beauty pageant, where she got into the top ten. This, for her, was already a huge achievement. Then she went for the Miss World pageant later that year and won it, beating 92 other contestants to wear the crown. Her modelling career since then has been burning non stop. She has fronted campaigns for L’Oreal and other big names. Boy, isn’t this just like those ‘happily ever after’ stories you only find in fairytales?
As a model, you must always update your confidence after each unsuccessful casting by reminding yourself of the above example and the fact that there are still a thousand opportunities to come. You must come to the point where ‘no’ does not mean that you are not good enough, but that you must try again – this is the type of confidence that distinguishes a model from people in other professions. When you reach this point, then you are capable of achieving anything – it’s just time that remains. Therefore, the key is to bag as many opportunities as one can. Moreover, we all know that in the process of bagging these, we must also let a few slip away.
