Just Sit Still and Look Pretty: What Modeling Means for Legal and Labor (In)Visibilities

Abstract:

This thesis seeks to understand models' labor and its intersection with legal discourse and labor organizing. The first chapter argues that glamor is the illusion that a model can just “sit still and look pretty” in return for economic and social capital. Yet, a model’s look, the lie of effortlessness, and perceived wealth all require extensive amounts of labor to create and maintain. An analysis of the European fashion market demonstrates how even when the fashion industry is at its most extractive, it is the glamorous image that prevails as the defining image of modeling. The second chapter unpacks how in the production of glamor, models become part of a live supply chain between agents and clients; rather than facilitating the movement of an object through a supply chain, they at once embody the object and the chain. This has led organizers to rethink points of power intervention and methods for building solidarity. The third chapter analyzes legal discourse surrounding victimhood, criminality, and evidence. It establishes that in attempting to concretize ideals like equality, legal discourse places certain victims outside the law. Because models are engaged in glamorous labor, this discourse most adversely affects them and renders their labor and injuries invisible.