Chapter 9

EYES WIDE OPEN

We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 CORINTHIANS 4:18

DETERMINED NOT TO LET the behavior of one sleazy photographer crush my spirit, I threw myself into my work, attending one casting call after another in preparation for the industry’s biggest event of the year—New York Fashion Week.

Every February, the top designers in the world descend on New York City to show off their newest lines, attracting swarms of celebrities and paparazzi and catapulting a select handful of fresh faces to instant supermodel status. It was the fashion industry’s equivalent of the Academy Awards, and like hundreds of other young hopefuls, I was eager to be invited to the party. For two weeks I tramped through the icy, frostbitten streets of greater Manhattan, auditioning for every designer from American Eagle to Vera Wang. It was exhausting and exhilarating all at once.

These auditions were the first real chance I’d gotten since arriving in New York to see my competition up close, and I felt my confidence plummeting by the minute. Having dropped almost six pounds since Stephen’s mandate that I lose “the bulk,” I went into Fashion Week auditions weighing in at a meager 115 pounds. At five feet ten, that was the thinnest I’d ever been, yet compared to some of the models I was running into at the castings, I looked huge. And they made sure I knew it. I expected the competition to be fierce, but I’d never encountered this level of cattiness. I tried to thicken my skin, but the comments from some of the other models bordered on abusive.

The designers weren’t shy about sharing their opinions either. I was experiencing new levels of humiliation—going out on a runway and giving my best effort, only to be greeted by a chorus of exasperated sighs from the darkened auditorium and by snickers of laughter from the other models backstage. It seemed that for every designer who was complimentary of my look and my walk, five or six others felt I was “too curvy” or “too big.” And when these criticisms were received en masse over the course of a five-day period, the overall experience was pretty demoralizing.

Even more disheartening were the pictures I saw on a lot of the other models’ comp cards—two-sided 6x9 glossy sheets that featured two or three of their best looks from their portfolios on one side and their height, weight, measurements, and contact info on the other. Almost all the cards included at least one topless pose, and in some cases, the models were completely nude. I was stunned. I thought the Saran Wrap incident was an isolated case of one sick individual taking advantage of a young girl who was new to the business. But I was starting to wonder if, at this level, topless or nude poses were actually standard practice.

What does posing nude have to do with fashion? I wondered. And yet the models with the R-rated comp cards seemed to be the ones getting the jobs.

After all I’d seen at auditions, I barely held out hope that one of the companies might be interested in me. So I was shocked when Stephen called from VMM to tell me I’d been cast in not just one but seven different runway shows.

I was ecstatic. After a miserable couple of weeks, I felt like I was turning a corner. Maybe I was finally on my way to making something of myself in this industry.

As soon as I hung up with Stephen, I called my mom to tell her the news.

“Mom, guess what?”

“What?” She sounded hesitant. I guess she had reason to be on her guard, especially after the last call she’d gotten from me.

“I’m walking in Fashion Week next month! I’ll be in seven different shows!” I couldn’t hold in my excitement. “Can you believe it?”

“Oh, honey, that’s fantastic!” I could practically hear Mom beaming over the phone. “I am so proud of you.”

“Will you or Dad be able to come?” I asked. I knew that at least one of them would have to stay home with Luke.

“Well, your dad is very busy with work right now.” Her words sounded like an apology. “But I’d love to be there. Just send me the dates, and I’ll book my flight right away.”

I couldn’t have been happier at the prospect of seeing her. In fact, I was almost more excited about that than about Fashion Week itself.

That night, after texting Mom the dates, I climbed into bed, exhausted but happy. I hadn’t felt this elated since the night in Huntington Beach when God had opened my heart to His truth.

As I thought about that night at youth group camp, I felt a pang of regret. It had been a while since I’d read my Bible or gone to church. Or even talked to God, for that matter. It was so much harder to focus on my faith and my relationship with God now that I was alone in New York. Back in Vegas, I’d had my church and my youth group to help me study and understand the Bible, and I had friends like Lance and Tatiana to keep me on track. Breanna had taken me to church with her a few times, but those Sundays were few and far between. Every once in a while, when I couldn’t sleep, I would put on my headphones and listen to one of the Joyce Meyer CDs my mom had given me. But it wasn’t the same as digging into the Word myself.

My faith was only a few months old, and there still was so much I didn’t know. Becoming a Christian and then immediately taking off for the New York modeling scene was like learning how to hold your breath underwater one day and then trying to swim the English Channel the next. I knew the basics, but I was hardly prepared to venture into the deep end.

There was no way around it: God had taken a backseat to my career.

Fashion Week was shaping up to be everything I’d expected—and then some. Celebrities from all around the world had flown in for this seven-day extravaganza filled with fashion shows, red-carpet events, and A-list parties. The fact that both my mom and Breanna’s mom had flown in for the event made the experience even more meaningful.

As soon as Mom saw me, she gasped at how much weight I’d lost.

“Kylie, you look so gaunt.” She couldn’t keep the concern from creeping into her voice. “Are you eating enough?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I assured her. “I just cut out the carbs and kicked up my cardio workouts a little. I’ll be able to slow it down after Fashion Week is over.” I wasn’t sure how true that statement was, but it set Mom’s mind at ease for the moment. I wanted her to enjoy this week, not spend the whole time worrying about me.

Thank goodness Mom didn’t see what happened backstage at the shows, or she would have been really worried.

While everything looked perfectly choreographed out on the runway, it was chaos behind the scenes. In every square inch there were half-naked models—both male and female—pushing, shoving, and frantically grabbing at dressing racks. Women staggered around in stilettos that were two inches too high and two sizes too small while hostile designers threw tantrums over gowns that weren’t draping quite right and pants that were bunching up in all the wrong places.

Hairstylists tore out extensions, filled the air with toxic clouds of hair spray, and scorched models’ scalps alternately with piping hot curling irons and flat irons. Makeup artists ripped off false eyelashes, yanked out eyebrows, and nearly blinded models with airbrushes. Everywhere you looked, it was absolute bedlam. There wasn’t an inch of privacy, and there was virtually no compassion or respect shown for the models who were sacrificing their bodies for the sake of a sixty-second walk down the runway.

To my relief, the styling for my American Eagle show went relatively smoothly. Their clothes tend to be more casual and sporty, which was similar to how I dressed anyway, so the backstage work didn’t require as much of a total transformation as some of the other labels.

I’ll never forget the feeling of anticipation as I waited for my cue to take the stage. My heart felt as if it were going to burst right out of my chest. This wasn’t just some weekend back-to-school show at the mall in Vegas; this was Fashion Week in New York.

This was the big time.

When the stagehand pointed at me and said, “Go!” I took a deep breath, rounded the corner, and walked onto the runway. The music was deafening, and the nonstop camera flashes were so blinding I could barely see where I was going. Yet I was in my element. In an instant, all my feelings of doubt and insecurity evaporated. They were replaced with the absolute certainty that this was where I belonged—out on the runway, doing my thing, with all eyes on me. As I walked down that runway, there was no question in my mind. I was born to be a model.

And truth be told, I loved the actual modeling portion of the shows. It was everything else that came with it that I hated. For example, in one of the shows I did that week, the designer decided he wanted me to have an extreme, Lady Gaga–type look, so the stylist tied my hair into a giant bow and absolutely slathered it with a mixture of styling gel, paste, and putty to hold it in place. I have to admit they pulled off the look, but for every second I spent on stage, it felt like I spent about an hour trying to wash that crazy concoction out of my hair. Another night, the stylist held a flat iron on my hair so long it actually started smoking. By the time she finished, my hair was literally fried to a crisp. It didn’t matter to the stylist, though. She knew that if she didn’t like the way it looked, she could always throw in some extensions to cover up the mess. She wouldn’t have to deal with the damage, which lasted for months.

In one of my final shows of the week, the designer wanted an ultra-dramatic look, so the stylist started gluing false eyelashes onto my lids. It wasn’t until my eyes started burning and tears started streaming down my face that I realized she was using permanent glue.

“It burns like battery acid,” she said matter-of-factly. “But it’s the best glue in the world when it comes to making sure those lashes stay put.”

By the time she was finished, I had to admit the lashes looked gorgeous. And it was a good thing I liked them because no matter how hard I scrubbed, I couldn’t get them off. I tried everything—soap, cold cream, makeup remover—but every product I tried was powerless against the miracle glue. Eventually my eyes became so red and irritated that I resorted to pulling out the lashes by hand. Unfortunately, when they finally came out, they took my real lashes with them. I looked horrible. It was more than a month before my natural eyelashes started to grow back in again. Even now, several years later, they’re nowhere near as thick or as long as they used to be. I used to wonder about the origin of the expression “Beauty is pain.” Now I have no doubt the phrase was first uttered backstage during a fashion show.

Aside from my charred and gooey hair and the unremovable eyelashes, my first Fashion Week went off without a hitch. I wasn’t plucked from obscurity to become the next Heidi Klum or Tyra Banks, but I had proven my mettle among some of the best models in the industry and, for the most part, had enjoyed the experience.

The icing on the cake was the time I’d been able to spend with my mom. It had been so good to see her, which made it all the more difficult to say good-bye.

“You looked so beautiful up there,” Mom gushed, her eyes glistening. “I don’t know when I’ve been more proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I wrapped my arms around her in a tight hug and felt my own eyes starting to tear up.

“I wish your father could have been here to see you.”

I let out a sigh. “Me, too.” I wanted Dad to be proud of me. There will be other shows, I told myself. I was too busy to dwell on it long, and besides, the glow of the spotlight hadn’t faded yet.

I was still riding the high of Fashion Week when Breanna came back to the apartment one afternoon with terrible news.

“It’s bad, Kylie. Really bad.” She was so choked up she could barely get the words out. Finally she told me the whole dreadful story.

It turned out that the owners of Vision Model Management had decided to close up shop, and they took off overnight with all the company’s cash, leaving the models, bookers, agents, and handlers with nothing.

“What about the money we earned during Fashion Week?” I sputtered. “Aren’t we entitled to that?”

She shook her head. “That’s not the worst of it. We have to be out of the apartment immediately.”

I felt like I’d been robbed in broad daylight. I’d forgotten that the agency owned the apartment and deducted the rent from whatever money we made—however much that was. In the two months I’d been in New York, I hadn’t seen a single dime from any of the jobs I’d done. Everything went through the agency. In addition to the rent, they deducted agency fees, the cost of our portfolios, and whatever other expenses they deemed necessary. We were completely at their mercy.

Less than twenty-four hours ago I was walking the runway at Fashion Week. Now I had no job, no money, and no place to live.

Breanna and I both called our moms and broke the bad news. Like us, they were angry yet powerless. Seeing no other choice, Breanna and I packed up our things while our moms made arrangements for us to return home.

“Well, it was fun while it lasted.” Breanna stood in front of me solemnly, suitcase in hand.

“I’ll miss you.” I tried in vain not to cry. “You’ve been a great friend.”

“We’ll keep in touch,” she promised. “After all, Nebraska isn’t that far from Vegas.”

We gave each other a final hug and went our separate ways. I never did see Breanna again. I don’t know if she made her way back to New York or if she even stayed in the industry, for that matter.

Either way, my illusions about the glamorous world of modeling were crumbling before my eyes. Now that I was seeing what happened behind the scenes, I realized what a lonely and unscrupulous business modeling can be. In just a matter of months, I’d been lied to, taken advantage of, insulted, and almost assaulted. Now I was on my way back home with nothing to show for my trouble except a few credentials on my résumé and some new shots for my portfolio.

But there was one more thing I was leaving with. In spite of all the negative things that had happened, I was leaving New York with a renewed conviction that I was born to be a model. I had seen how harsh and distasteful the industry could be at the bottom. Surely, I thought, things must be better at the top.