I felt embarrassed for them and I could see that they were furious that I was witnessing this scene under Seb’s satisfied gaze. But above all, I found it unfair: they were perfectly slim. I wasn’t sure I would be able to do any better.
For the time being, the apple diet was working: I’d weighed myself that morning, and I was touching 56 kilos. And I wasn’t even really hungry! Amid this whirlwind of preparations, the fact was that I didn’t really have time to think of eating. But would I hold firm over the long run? And why had they ordered this gargantuan buffet for a gathering of models who were all supposed to be on a diet?
Émile greeted me very sweetly too and introduced me to Nicolas, the hairstylist who was going to look after me. They were absolutely insistent on having me in the photos and videos that would serve to showcase the agency in New York. And so before I could blink, I found myself being made up and having my hair done all in one go. They took possession of me and all I had to do was let them get on with it.
Nicolas was in ecstasy about the quality of my skin: ‘Wow, Victoire, you remind me of Daria Werbowy. And I know what I’m talking about, I did the Lancôme campaign with her.’ I was flattered. For the last fortnight, I had been browsing through the magazines to familiarise myself with this new world and I’d spotted this sublime, blue-eyed brunette who, according to the papers, was one of the ten highest-paid models in the world. Let’s hope that the comparison would bring me luck. ‘Everybody will just adore a complexion like that! And you’re right for every type of hair and make-up.’
He explained how it worked: a few days before each fashion show, a model is assigned to the make-up artists and hairstylists, and they use her to create the make-up and hairstyle look for the season. ‘After that, they take Polaroids which are posted up in all the dressing rooms so that the other make-up artists and hairstylists can reproduce the look on all the other models in the fashion show.’
I didn’t even have time to ask Nicolas if Daria was nice, because it was now my turn to be filmed. An assistant put me in front of the camera and a huge fan started up, sending my hair, which Nicolas had taken great pains to style, flying all over the place. ‘Go ahead, Victoire! Walk around, use the space, enjoy yourself! Look at me. That’s it! Now to the left. Your eyes, give me your eyes! Great! Laugh! That’s perfect, we’re done!’
It had been short, but intense. And I loved it!
Louis and Émile came over to say goodbye. ‘We’ll see each other again in New York very soon. Between now and then, get plenty of rest. We want you at the top of your game. And don’t whatever you do get tanned! Stay in the shade – that’s a must.’
In the taxi on the way back – thanks, Seb, for sparing us the train – my ‘primary agency’ insisted on this point: white skin, face and body. A tan was out of the question, and no bikini line either. And especially no muscles. ‘Don’t be doing any sport, will you? They want feminine women, not athletes. The only exercise you’re allowed is walking. You even need to watch it with swimming – wide shoulders are not attractive.’ I couldn’t help looking at him with a certain annoyance. ‘Well, what did you think, honey? Being a top model takes effort! It’s a profession.’
That same day, Vladimir, the head booker at Elite, took my parents out to lunch at L’Avenue, a chic restaurant on the Avenue Montaigne. No doubt Dad’s constant calls about each little detail of the contract had started to irritate him. He’d probably decided that it would be easier just to speak to my parents directly and also get to know them a bit in order to put their minds at rest. They must have been used to that at Elite – I was almost old for a debutante. Most of their recruits were not even over 16 and I assumed that coaching the parents was also part of their job. Be that as it may, the contract issues were sorted out and my parents seemed reassured when they saw how serious the agency was about looking after me: ‘In any case, it’s in their interests that no harm comes to you. We trust you, but do be careful, Sweetpea.’
I don’t think it ever occurred to Vladimir to invite me to this lunch too, which was fine by me, because there wasn’t much for me to do in a restaurant. As somebody who worked in the industry, he knew that you didn’t invite a model out to eat.
33 23 34
I returned to Avenue Montaigne accompanied by Seb to drop off my contract and pick up my book and my comp cards. It was Vladimir who greeted me with a wink and pointed to the wall of photos behind him: in the midst of all those other faces, I spotted mine. It took me a moment to realise that this girl, who looked every inch a model like all those girls in the magazines, was actually me. What a strange feeling it was! It was as if I could recognise my outer shell, while knowing perfectly well that it wasn’t me inside. I sensed it was going to take me a while to get used to my new image: of me the model …
The book made an even bigger impression, when I saw Sergei’s photos for the first time. The sexy girl in the oversized shirt was me! The one whose breast was peeping out a bit (I wouldn’t be showing that one to my father), the gentle dreamy one in front of the mirror, the one with the killer look … All of them were me. On the comp card, slipped into the back of the book, it said: ‘Victoire Maçon Dauxerre, 5'10", 33–23–34, brown hair, blue eyes’, complete with the smart Elite logo.
I left feeling a bit dazed, with my comp cards and contract in my bag. A month previously, I was a totally stressed-out girl about to take the entrance exam for Sciences Po, and a month later, I was a totally stressed-out girl who everyone thought was a super-sexy woman and who was on her way to New York fashion week.
The night before we left for Marseille, I went to the cinema with my parents to see Picture Me, a documentary by Sara Ziff, an American model who had filmed her life over the course of a year. She recounts the happy times – the fashion shows, the adorable designers, the incredible hotels – but also the harsh side of this profession: the endless waiting at the castings, the occasional cruelty of the people who dress you, style your hair and do your make-up, the rivalry between the girls, the disjointed lifestyle, the jet-lag, the pressure and the feeling of being treated like an object, or sometimes worse than an object.
As I came out of the cinema, a man came up to me: ‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle. Have you ever thought of becoming a model?’ I was so taken aback that I didn’t know what to say! He introduced himself, said that he worked for a major agency and that, if I was interested, he would be happy to … I laughed as I told him that I had just signed with Elite. ‘I’m out of luck, they were quicker off the mark than me! I wish you a wonderful career.’
In the car on the way home, my parents spoke very frankly: the film clearly showed that it was a profession that could be very brutal. They stressed that I should never forget that I had a free choice and that I could decide what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do. That I should never put up with people treating me badly. That they would always be there for me, and that I could call them at any time of the day or night. ‘Well, preferably in the daytime, actually.’
Dad was trying to make light of it, but deep down inside I could feel something electric rousing itself in the pit of my stomach. The same thing that had stopped me sleeping before the Sciences Po exams. In fact, it was something I’d been familiar with for virtually my whole life. It was a stabbing anxiety that implanted itself in my guts and then wouldn’t let go. The same anxiety that had made me ill at primary school, that had stopped me returning to secondary school and that demanded that I be the best at everything all the time, so that people would choose me, love me and stick with me.
It was that bastard fear. That evening, I felt it stirring within me. And I realised that it would be my sole companion when I set off for New York.
Three Apples a Day
Mum, Léopold, my grandparents and I left for Marseille. Dad was due to join us the following week, while Alexis had decided to go to the Bayonne festival with his friends instead. And so there we were on holiday in a pretty villa and the only thing on the agenda was to enjoy oursel
ves and each other’s company. Well, not quite, because I did have a bit of ‘holiday homework’. For a start, Seb and Flo had both insisted that I swot up by reading the fashion magazines and taking note of the postures and faces of the models and the names and styles of the designers, the make-up artists and the hairstylists. That way, I’d get a better idea of what was expected of me. Then I had to practise walking according to Évelyne’s instructions: relax the facial muscles and the shoulders, think about my fingers in order to avoid the Playmobil arms, move my pelvis smoothly, focus on keeping straight, stare into the middle distance (for the killer look) and put one foot in front of the other like a big old horse. I performed all this by the edge of the pool, which made for a perfect catwalk, but only on the shady side to avoid getting tanned.
Finally, I had to continue to lose weight so that I could easily get into that famous size 4, which I hadn’t even known existed before being spotted by Elite. Up until that point, I’d managed things impeccably: three apples a day, carefully selected on the basis of their appealing colour and appetising shape. Before each meal, I picked out a pretty plate and laid out the contents of my unchanging menu on it with ever-increasing artistry: in a mosaic, in a fan shape or cut into little dice or thin slices, all to be savoured slowly, biting into them and chewing well before swallowing. I also drank a few coffees, but not too many, and a lot of Pepsi Max (because it tasted better than Diet Coke and the bubbles made you feel full). I didn’t drink anything else at all. For the first three days, I felt a bit hungry, but nothing I couldn’t handle. And in the days that followed, I began to feel lighter and lighter and stronger and stronger, like a sportswoman pulling off a good performance. In the space of a week I had already lost nearly 2 kilos. Losing weight was quite easy, in actual fact!
But things began to get a bit complicated in Marseille. As I had nothing else to do but think about what lay in store for me, Flo’s voice started to echo around incessantly in my head: ‘Like that, you’ll never get into the clothes.’ This was just around the time that I was beginning to get fed up with apples. Sometimes I replaced them with other fruits, but how could I know what their exact calorie content was? Did half a melon or a punnet of strawberries contain more or less than an apple? On top of that, I had constant stomach ache. I didn’t realise initially that eating nothing but raw fruit could cause these symptoms. I thought that it was the anxiety, because my fear had flooded into the vacuum and silence of the holidays, as if I’d opened the taps on a big pipe and a nasty, heavy anxiety was bubbling up inside me. And I had to fight hard to avoid drowning in it.
The results from Sciences Po finally came through: I’d failed. The doors to the other colleges were also beginning to close: I called Fénelon, Henri-IV and Louis-le-Grand to see if I could potentially postpone my starting date by a year. They said that I couldn’t, but that there was nothing to stop me from reapplying the following year. This time, the die was really cast: I had no choice but to succeed in the path that fate had set me on.
If I screwed up in New York, I’d have nothing to fall back on.
Since I wasn’t all that intelligent, the only option left to me was to be beautiful. I’d signed with Elite, and so I was going to be the best model in town. Impeccable, beyond reproach, utterly in keeping with what was expected of me. I was going to lose even more weight, learn to walk perfectly and do everything to ensure that my skin was an immaculate white. I was going to stack absolutely all the odds in my favour so that I would have a meteoric, explosive and dazzling career, because this was now my destiny, and it was up to me to grasp it by the horns.
So long as I managed to ‘get into the clothes’, obviously.
When, for the second day running, the scales stubbornly continued to read 52.9 and refused to go any lower, which they had been doing regularly since I’d started my diet, I cracked. I opened up to Mum, who always looked trim and sublime, no matter what. I’d never really broached the subject with her till then and she’d been watching me eating my fruit day after day without uttering a word. Naturally she did everything she could to reassure me: she told me that I was very beautiful, that I was already decidedly thinner than when they’d chosen me and that there was nothing to get worked up about, because I still had another month in which to lose that inch around the hips.
But I did go back onto the internet to look for some info on diets. All the websites talked about ‘plateaux’ – those times when, even if you stick strictly to your diet, your weight remains constant instead of dropping. If only I could have done a bit of sport, that would doubtless have helped me to get past the plateau, but all sport was forbidden. I did, though, permit myself a few lengths of the pool and I went to buy my fruit on foot so that I could get a bit of exercise – but only at the end of the day when the streets were in the shade.
It was the first time in my life that I hadn’t spent the summer at La Baule. Every year from the year dot we’d always got together there with my grandparents. I loved their cute little house, nestling in a garden awash with lavender and a stone’s throw from the beach. Granddaddy would take us shrimping and there was the smell of the sea and the seaweed. At teatime we would stuff ourselves on niniches, those long soft lollipops in all the colours of the rainbow, and large slices of brioche with redcurrant jelly, which was Nan’s speciality. Or else a nice slice of buttered bread copiously smeared with rillettes. Granddaddy was a real food lover! When I was 10, they stopped renting that house and took a large seafront apartment instead.
I was the one who first noticed that Granddaddy was trembling. I remember it very well: it was the year I turned 13. I’d decided to interview him about his life story, because I admired him and I wanted to know everything about him. For several hours every day, he spoke into my microphone about his childhood and his youth. After studying at the École des Arts et Métiers, his dream had been to become a master glazier or else an art teacher and to take over the stained-glass workshop that his great-uncle had bequeathed him. But his grandmother had been firmly set against it. And so he set aside his dreams of being an artist and became an engineer and surveyor instead, always telling himself that once he retired he would take up painting, for want of stained glass. He drew wonderfully well, perfectly even. But when he finally did have the time for it, his hands began to tremble. In the space of a few months, his Parkinson’s had put paid to his drawing.
That summer, Granddaddy had been too ill to enjoy the beaches of La Baule. And that was why we were now in Marseille, in this large, comfortable, one-storey house where he could get around more easily.
The more the days went by, the worse I felt. I was afraid of what lay in store for me, of not being up to it, of being separated from my family. And seeing Granddaddy in this state made me really sad. I loved him so much and I think we were very much alike in many ways. He knew about anxiety too and the fear of not being where you ought to be. Of passing the important things by, of not doing what you should have been doing, of missing out on the essential things, of failing in life.
As my father wasn’t there, I slept with Mum. Right up against her to draw in her odour and her body warmth and to imprint the memory for when I was all alone over there and missing her terribly. I already knew that I would miss her dreadfully. Unbearably, even. I had no idea how I was going to get by without her and without the rest of them.
Even in the middle of the Marseille summer, tucked up in Mum’s bed, I was starting to feel cold all the time.
Yùki
I missed Sophie, but I didn’t dare ring her – I’d cancelled all the plans we’d had for July and we hadn’t seen each other for ages. And what would I have said to her if I did ring her? That I was stressing out about the idea of going to work in New York, the city that I had been dreaming of for ever? That I wasn’t sure if I wanted to become a supermodel, something that all the girls of my age dreamed about? That I was afraid of not being able to put one foot in front of the other on the catwalk and that I would have to make do with eating fru
it while I was living out the dream? She had her own dreams of studying and becoming a journalist – what would she make of my little existential crises?
Fortunately, Léo was on hand to listen to me. Even though he was much younger than me, I’d always shared a lot with him. Whereas Alexis put me on edge with all his emotional stuff and intimate questions, Léopold listened to me very attentively and responded with tenderness and common sense. He would often say: ‘You tell me about so many things that I’ll be able to become a psychiatrist and I won’t even have to study for it!’ He was so cute when he explained to me that I was beautiful now and so there was just no way that, suddenly overnight, I wouldn’t be beautiful any more. That I was too clever not to make a success of my new life. That I looked perfectly slim to him and he couldn’t see what the problem was. That he was convinced that I would be taken on for all the fashion shows. And above all else, that I shouldn’t worry, because what with Skype and texting and emails, we’d be able to speak to each other every day and they would always be with me. Nothing could separate us from each other, not even the 3,500 miles and the big time difference. ‘And you know what, Vic? We really are all so proud of you. Not everybody has a supermodel for a sister. And at Elite, to boot!’
Dad eventually joined us. I did my best not to spoil the atmosphere, but I just couldn’t shake off my anxiety. Happily, the scales finally deigned to drop again: I was slowly closing in on 51 kilos. So much so that Dad asked me if I was contemplating starting to eat a bit of meat and vegetables again. I think he just didn’t get it. He’d always loved Mum and thought she was the most beautiful woman ever, but it had never occurred to him to wonder how she managed to stay so slim. The fact was that she had the appetite of a sparrow. I’d only ever seen her picking at food, never really eating. There was just no chance of her ever putting on weight. And in fact when Dad looked like he was going to insist on the meat and vegetables, she told him not to worry.
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