A few months ago, I shared a post about being super excited to have walked two shows during swim week. I must admit, for a novice, that was an amazing experience. And it could have all been bliss…

BUT IT WASN’T.

Welcome to Swim Week’s the bad and the ugly.

So I was booked for two shows, I met an amazing and empowering group of women, and I had the experience of a lifetime. It was perfect, right?

Not quite. And I wasn’t the only one to think so. Swim Week left a few of us with a bad taste in our mouths.

I’m going to start out with the power of NO.

This simple word is so powerful. And as horrible as it may seem to some, it is NECESSARY.

It was never more apparent to many of us than during swim week when thousands of hopeful women expected to hear back from casting calls ranging from small runway shows all the way to the Sports Illustrated rookies casting. It was nerve wrecking! The suspense awaiting whether or not you had made it or if you’d be booked leading up to the very day when you saw the show begin without you, was terrible.

I mean, how difficult is it to say NO?

For an industry that has long been associated with mental health issues, they have sure mastered the art of making women feel even more insecure and unfit.

I had friends calling me crying because they had no idea if they had been selected moments before the runway show for SI had begun, women who were in the final round and had attended parties with the models selected.

Likewise, I saw that happen in many of the shows, including to myself. I remember leaving a casting call an hour after I had walked because at that point I honestly didn’t care if I had been selected or not. But so many women waited hours unbeknownst to them that the models who had been selected had been told on the spot. They waited there, hopeful, without a clue only to be let down because someone felt that saying ‘NO’ wasn’t necessary.

Except it is. Let us know.

Don’t waste our time!!!

This happens so often in this industry, and it is so annoying.

I know we are meaningless to you, but our time matters. Our lives matter.

Give us a concise answer, don’t be that person that leads you on because he doesn’t have the balls to say he’s not interested.

JUST SAY NO.

It really is that easy.

That’s what I would call the bad. Here comes the ugly. And brace yourself because it’s both BAD and UGLY AF.

The modeling industry is full of A*holes preying on young people’s hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, I saw this first hand, WITH KIDS, and it broke my heart.

WHY AREN’T PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THIS? WTF? I met a young lady (maybe 16 years old) who had been SCAMMED into spending thousands of dollars to participate in runway shows that never happened or that were put together just so that these “paying models” (read victims) could walk.

I mean, how horrible is that?

Finding young men and women who haven’t been scouted but have a dream and cheating them out of their money, promising things they will never deliver.

This is the UGLY.

Preying on children and teenagers, damaging them into thinking they aren’t worthy, stealing from them. It was grotesque. The young woman who told me her story was so brave. She went around telling everyone, making sure that it wouldn’t happen to us. Letting herself be vulnerable but through it being much stronger than she knew.

It is things like this that discourage me from truly immersing myself into modeling, and I am just brushing the surface. This is not even counting the stories I heard about plus-sized models being discriminated or witnessing other models being discriminated because of their hair or skin color. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is because of the bad and the ugly that I stay at bay, doing little jobs here and there but maintaining my DIGNITY AND MY INTEGRITY.

Much has changed in the modeling industry, but it still has a long way to go.