IN, please be gentle.

Alice’s first casting call was today. It was for an Aveda line called Intelligent Nutrients. This call was for models for a hair demonstration, to be held later this month. If she gets this, she gets $200 to have her hair done in front of a crowd. Not bad.

We’re told to be at there at 3, sharp. Bring a copy of her Polaroid sheet, dress in tight jeans, with a nice top, and ‘look pretty.’ We bring those really high heels, in case they need her to wear them, a hair brush and her makeup. In the car, I ask Alice to wash the random ink off her forearm, figuring cleanliness may be a plus.

She’s a wee bit nervous, unsure mostly of what is to come and what they will ask her to do (walk in those heels? Oh no). Elijah has counseled her to use this as a learning experience and see what the other girls are wearing and how they look. “Then strive to look better.”

The place is very cool – trendy, with a contempo-Asian-herbal feel to it. Concrete floors, exposed brick, pale greens and browns. There’s a shop in front, and a cafe in back that sells herbal drinks and teas. The whole place smells great, like the cool soaps I snatch from Hyatt hotels.

We are greeted by what appears to be an Aveda employee and asked to go to the cafe, fill out a form, then come back to the front area for a headshot. The tables at the cafe are about 2/3 full of models and only one table seems to have actual guests. All in all I count 25-30 models, most (all but 5) are women. Probably six of them have parents with them, all mothers, except one girl who was accompanied by both parents.

Alice was perfectly dressed for this. The other girls mostly had on tight jeans, tight tops and were in high heels. Not a alot of jewelry, moderate make-up, nothing too fancy with their hair. Of course some variations – some had on short skirts, pants other than jeans, a couple mini-dresses, hair other than straight and long, some tall and some really tall. What didn’t vary was the use of high heels. They all had them on; black patents, leopard print, stilletos and platforms. The few guys all looked like they just finished playing frisbee or something. Definitely nothing fancy – loose pants, t-shirts, high top sneakers; maybe one minute prep time.

What Alice didn’t have, that the rest of them seemed to, was experience, someone to talk to, and The Book. OK, well there was me but I didn’t count. She wanted someone of that world to be with and hang out with. The Book is like a really fancy photo album. Plastic sheeted pages with pictures of the model taken at other jobs, in a variety of looks. About half of the other models had books. This isn’t just an intimidation piece; we saw the Aveda folks actually scan through a number of the books when they talked directly with the models.

The other parents looked pretty normal. I guess after seeing the two models and their mother at Vision last week I suspected it would be like Little Miss Sunshine, with former models or model-like middle aged women behind their kids. But most of the parents looked boring, like me. Just there because their kid was there. It could have been a soccer game, play performance or PTA meeting.

After Alice had her picture taken we sat in the cafe with everyone else. They called models 2 or 3 at a time, who walked to a back corner where 3 or 5 people were sitting. (It was hard to tell who the really important players were here.) At one point this older Anglo guy in an Asian smock wandered through the cafe looking intently at the models as though he was looking for the best pumpkin to carve. He’d wander to a model and finger she hair, then move to another one. He didn’t do this with everyone, maybe just 5 or 6. A few of them were asked to the back.

We waited probably a half hour. During this time the models just waited, while some, which seemed like the first in line, were either talked to, or picked out from the cafe and talked to, and eventually left. All at once an announcement was made that they were done and everyone could go home. There was a vague mention of ‘everyone will be called’ and be sure to pick up your free health bar on the way out. That was it.

Alice pummeled me with questions as we left. What did that mean? Was she picked, or not? The guy didn’t touch her hair. Was that a bad thing? Why did they talk to the first group and not the others? Of course I didn’t have the answers. I just reminded her that its all about image and what the client wants, and that its probably best not to speculate too much.

Impressions? Kind of boring overall. Not as much fun as a theater audition because there wasn’t much to do. Probably good to bring a book if the waits are long. Easier when you do know people and can have some chat-buddies. But unless dismissed, the models can’t just leave in case someone needs to finger their hair or ask a few questions.

So how good looking were the models? OK, they were all tall, slim and beautiful. The guys were all cute. But I saw clear differences in attractiveness. There were a few who looked odd (one looked like a walking Barbie doll) but in a sea of beauty odd may be the way to get noticed. Probably 4 or 5 girls seemed like pros. Not only did they have faces that seemed straight from an ad in the cosmetics section of CVS but they also seemed to produce a certain reaction or buzz when they came in. Like they were the Heidi Klumms and Christy Turlingtons of the Vision modeling/Minneapolis modeling set. One was truly, can’t take your eyes off her, gorgeous. All they had The Book, experience and people to talk to.

Alice was the youngest. I’d guess maybe those with parents were 16 or under, but the rest were in the 18-24 range. It really was hard to tell. On Alice’s Polaroid picture page the Vision folks didn’t list her age, just her height, shoe and dress size, and bust-waist-hip measurement. Age as a number doesn’t matter. It’s the look, or what the model looks like that matters. Nevertheless, compared to this group, Alice does look younger.

And she is. She is a 14 year old with random pen ink on her arm, who came to this casting call after her ballet class, and will go home to play Nancy Drew on the computer and listen to the Jonas Brothers when she gets home. I just wonder how much of all this she was affected by. She didn’t voice any insecurities about her looks compared to the other girls, which would have been easy to do. She seemed bothered more by not having social connections, and being part of a group. Yep. That’s 14.

~ by modelmom on July 9, 2008.