For The Best

When I was young, I wanted to be a model.  I had hopes and dreams that I would be walking through the mall and someone would gasp and call me and my folks over to insist I come to their agency and then the fame and the fortune and the 'proof' that I was attractive.

I worshipped the supermodels of the 80s and 90s.  I still have a photo album full of photos of Christy Turlington that I carefully cut out of magazines.  

I think it probably impacted my self esteem that I was never "discovered" and I probably took it as further proof that I was ugly, and fat, and eventually "too short" (once it was clear the growing had stopped.)

It's sad now because I struggle still with how I look but I can look back on pictures of myself as a younger person and I wasn't any of those things.  (Even if I'm not terribly tall.)

I don't like my photo taken.  I cringe at photos of myself now.  

But this isn't about that.

I've been seeing things lately, as certain truths and realities about the "higher ups" come out pointing out that the beauty world and the modelling world was often a gateway to human trafficking.  And if not, it was harmful, so incredibly harmful to the people in the industry.

But I was thinking about it the other night and maybe the reason I never got "discovered", beyond possibly not being quite the right height or body type, is that the universe wanted me to not get thrown into a world that could cause me extreme damage and hurt.  

Maybe I was saved from horrible things.

It's sort of along the lines of that idea that you were five minutes late for work because your door wouldn't lock and that somehow saved you from an accident you'd have been in if you had left "on time."

So I guess I wish I could impart the understanding to my younger self that I was an attractive, thin, fit, healthy person and that not going into modelling wasn't evidence of anything other than it not being meant for me for a bunch of different reasons.

Who knows if I had been "discovered" in a mall at whatever young, impressionable age, where I might have ended up.  But that being said, my parents had pretty good radar for things I think and so maybe I would have been ok no matter what.  But there's perhaps some comfort for me in knowing that the world of modelling is shady and unkind and that I didn't need that in my psyche.  You know?