Size Zero

by Victoire Dauxerre

  The Fat Cow

  It was dreadful. Rotten countryside, rotten weather and I hadn’t slept a wink all night. I’d been stressing ever since Flo had called me to say that I had a photo session with a male model for Calvin Klein – incredibly, the double act who had ignored me for all their shows had suddenly remembered me and demanded me urgently – at a country house in the middle of nowhere. I’d seen in the magazines what those kinds of photos could be like: the girl half naked hugging the naked torso of the guy and swooning. Or else the guy’s nose in the girl’s cleavage, or loved-up poses, lips touching. I wasn’t interested and I wouldn’t be able to deal with that kind of situation.

  As planned, Mum dropped me off at eight o’clock at the Gare du Nord, where I was supposed to be meeting the other model and the team, but they failed to spot me and left without me. How nice of them! I called Flo, who told me to take a taxi and so I spent an hour and a half on my own on the road, wondering what was in store for me at the other end.

  Damien Blottière, the photographer, was adorable. He gave me a really warm welcome, apologised profusely for his team not waiting for me and immediately reimbursed the taxi. He showed me around the house, indicated the rooms where I could have a rest or get changed and introduced me to the others in the large living room which had been transformed into a studio. There was Nicolas, the really nice hairstylist I’d worked with on the Silent video in Paris before heading off to the fashion weeks; Sergio, an exuberant South American make-up artist – very much the ‘my darling, my darling’ type – who was absolutely adorable; the dresser sent by Calvin Klein; the agent of the model who would pose with me, who was a tall, bizarre and mysterious type who didn’t say a word and struck me as rather unsavoury; and finally there was Christian the model, a very young German who was incredibly thin and couldn’t have been more than 16, who had very blue eyes and looked like an animal in a trap. I instantly felt relieved – the guy didn’t have the presence to do the kind of sexy photos I’d been dreading – but worried too, because clearly he was as much of a novice as me.

  I waited for ages and ages while they set their stuff up and moved things around. They filmed Christian on his own while I sat by the buffet and watched. I was beginning to feel really very hungry. I could smell the ham on the plate just under my nose. God knows how long it had been since I’d last eaten ham – three months, maybe four.

  I used to really like ham and I felt like eating ham then and there. An irrepressible yearning welled up from inside and invaded my brain. I began to salivate, and to debate with myself: Ham’s out of the question – too salty and too fatty. In fact, when Christian wanted to have a slice just now, his agent rapped him on the fingers to stop him. Ham is forbidden. If you want to eat, eat fruit or vegetables. Look, there are some tomatoes and even a cucumber. But no ham, it’s full of protein and will make you fat.

  Yes, but Flo said that for the photo shoots we could put a bit of weight back on. Going up to size 6 wasn’t a problem as long as I got back to size 4 for the February fashion week in three months’ time. I can go easy for a bit.

  But if you go easy, don’t eat ham but the really nice stuff! Cheese, the niniches of La Baule or Nan’s apple tart and stew. Granddaddy’s rillettes on toast. Or else some brioche. Mmm, brioche with redcurrant jam. After all the effort you’ve made, surely you’re not going to cave in for a slice of ham?

  I rolled up a slice of ham and bit into it with delight – it was delicious. I took a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth slice.

  I have to get away from this buffet, I told myself.

  Christian walked past with his worried air and headed towards the kitchen. I followed him, figuring that if we were going to pose together, we might as well get to know each other. When I walked in, he was eating a lump of sugar. He turned round and jumped when he saw me, as if he’d been caught committing a terrible crime. He looked terrified and begged me not to say anything to his agent, and of course I promised not to. How could you get into such a state just because you were caught eating a lump of sugar? I tried to get him talking a bit as he looked in such a bad state, but he completely clammed up and I could understand that. Even though he was a beginner, he must already have learned enough in this business to know that it was better not to trust anyone.

  My turn still hadn’t come and so I went to see Damien, who was adjusting the settings on his camera. A glance at his computer screen revealed that his work was absolutely incredible. He digitally cropped and shaped the photos he’d taken to turn them into minutely detailed and intriguing works of art. He summoned Christian and I returned to the buffet. Not the crisps, nor the cured sausage. But the dried apricots were still acceptable – they were fruits, after all.

  And so I ate the apricots. The entire packet, in fact, in less than ten minutes. A quarter of an hour later I was doubled up in pain. My digestive system was making me pay violently for this monstrous intake of food, which it had become completely unused to. And what a bloody idiot – I hadn’t thought to bring my laxatives. I lay down on the bed in one of the rooms Damien had shown me when I arrived and I went to sleep.

  When the dresser woke me up, I was feeling slightly better. She handed me the first outfit and I got undressed in front of the large mirror on the wall of the bedroom. When I saw my body, I gasped: it was completely deformed. Above the beige thong, my stomach had swollen appallingly. It looked like a ball balanced on my thighs, which as a result looked impossibly thin. I looked like the little starving Africans you see on TV. The dresser’s eyes focused on my navel and then slid up to my face. My heart began to race as it dawned on me that I might not be able to get into the clothes. ‘Are you OK, Victoire?’ I told her that I’d eaten too much and that I had a very bad stomach ache. She put away the very slim-fitting little blue dress she’d intended for me and handed me instead a massive white cape dress that you could have got a cow into.

  Nobody said anything and nobody saw anything. Damien got me to pose, white-faced as I was, in my white dress in front of a white wall. He was sweet with me and I followed his instructions like an automaton. He didn’t notice that I just wasn’t there.

  I wasn’t anywhere, I no longer existed.

  When I got home, I took an enema and I spent all night crapping to expel that day’s food orgy. ‘That’ll teach me.’

  The following morning, I got on the scales with trepidation. I was sure that I’d put on a kilo, maybe two. Five slices of ham and a packet of dried apricots was like a time bomb.

  The scales read 47.2. I hadn’t put on a single gram. That unpleasant day was ultimately going to open up new vistas for me …

  Life as a Clothes Hanger

  It was as if the slices of ham at Damien’s photo shoot had awakened my appetite and nothing could be done to suppress it again. It became a bottomless pit. Since it didn’t make me fat, I started to eat again, but healthily and never in front of other people. I was ashamed, as if I were doing something very private or very bad. I ate fruit and steamed vegetables, chicken and fish. When Dad noticed what was on my plate, he was reassured. What he didn’t know was that to complement my new diet, I was taking laxatives in the morning and an enema every evening. I spent half my life in the toilet, my stomach hurt and my bum hurt, and I felt like vomiting all the time, but at least I didn’t feel hungry any more, or a lot less hungry at any rate.

  I did put on 3 kilos, though, and initially I saw it as a disaster – my nasty little voice nearly drove me nuts. But eventually I grew comfortable with it. If I was around 50 kilos, I could get into a size 6 and a size 8, which for the photo shoots was ideal. After Christmas I would go back onto a strict diet to get back down to a size 4.

  Nobody noticed anything at the agency. Mind you, they all had a laugh at my expense because Damien had given me €200 for my taxi back and I handed Flo the €35 left over so that she could give it back to him. They couldn’t believe it – they said they’d never heard of a model giving back unspent money on what she’d been advance
d and that all of Paris would be talking about it. It became the big wisecrack of the week: I was that girl who said hello, goodbye, please sir, thank you madam and, to cap it all, gave back the money she was advanced! Well, if it made them laugh, bully for them.

  A model’s life is not a party beyond the fashion shows.

  When I didn’t have any photo shoots, my main activity was doing the rounds of the editorial offices of the women’s magazines to do beauty shoots: photos of make-up, skin and hair. And they would talk to me about make-up, skin and hair as if they were the most important subjects in the world.

  I was getting bored.

  I did do a show for one little-known designer in a dark theatre amid suited and booted IBM executives. It was a dinner and they sat there eyeing us up as if we were the dessert. When I got home, I felt like vomiting.

  I was chosen too for the Sonia Rykiel lookbook. I was very happy to go there, because I liked that brand a lot and also the woman herself, her daughter and their story, but of course I didn’t get to see them. I was received by a photographer who didn’t even say hello to me and I spent four hours putting on clothes and posing in silence against a white backdrop, changing and then doing it all over again.

  When I got out of sessions like that, I felt totally empty, hollow and transparent, with the IQ of a clothes hanger. Lagerfeld was right: what else were we, ultimately?

  I went to London for two days for the lookbook and presentation of Gap, who had chosen me on Russell Marsh’s recommendation. I took the Eurostar with an excellent bottle of champagne picked out by Dad in my bag. I dropped in to see Russell at his office to present it to him and to thank him for everything he’d done for me. I was so pleased to see him again, and clearly he was pleased to see me too. He told me that it was rare in this world to meet girls who were ‘cultured and well brought up’. I didn’t dare tell him that what appealed to him was laughable to most of the people I associated with. He wished me good luck and set up an appointment with me for February. ‘You’ll see, it will be extraordinary!’

  I headed off to Regent’s Park, where I posed for three hours for a photographer who was about as friendly as a crocodile and who shouted, ‘Next!’ after each pose. Among the models present was the little German whose thinness had scared me in Milan. I know it sounds odd, but I felt relieved that she wasn’t dead.

  I don’t know if it was because I was eating more or because I was working less, but I felt that I was starting to think clearly again for the first time in months, and I was none too sure that this was good for my career.

  When the lookbook was wrapped up, we were invited to ‘move towards the buffet’ to have lunch before the guests arrived for the afternoon presentation. It was a splendid buffet, worthy of Russell Marsh! And miracle of miracles, for the first time ever I decided that I was actually entitled to make the most of it. I delighted in helping myself to a slice of courgette tart. The pastry was crusty and the filling was both tasty and creamy – I savoured every mouthful, right down to the last crumb. I liked eating, I adored eating, it was good to eat. And you can shut up, you bastard little voice – leave me in peace just this once.

  For dessert, I had a bowl of raw fruit – one shouldn’t take things too far, after all …

  All this gave me the energy to find out, and then to endure, what a ‘presentation’ was in the world of Gap. You take some models (living, human ones), you dress them in clothes from the latest collection, you put them into pairs of boy and girl, you put them on a little podium and you ask them not to move while the guests mill around, chat, tuck into the buffet and, if they so desire, inspect the said clothes close up. I was lucky enough to be paired with a very nice Parisian guy who lived just up the road from me, which meant we were able to get through this rather surreal experience by chatting about our respective home lives. Until, that is, one of the Gap representatives came over and brought us back into line: the models weren’t supposed to talk to anyone, let alone to each other. According to her, that would spoil the presentation of the collection. We shut up until her back was turned. It was a dog’s life, this life as a clothes hanger!

  The next day, I weighed myself and realised that the previous night’s enema had not been enough to erase the traces of the courgette tart: 50.5 kilos. Five hundred grams in one go. I wouldn’t eat another thing until I was back down to 50.

  Two days later, I hooked up again with my dear Olivier Rizzo, who had recommended me to Willy Vanderperre, his photographer friend who was also Belgian, for a photo shoot in Paris. We hugged and exchanged news, and then it was the usual routine: hair, make-up, hanging around. One hour, two, three, having to put up with an unbearable model who shared every little detail of her life, who knew everything there was to know, who handed down advice and who babbled and bragged endlessly. I just wanted her to shut up and I also wanted something to eat. I’d been on my apple diet for two days to be sure of getting into the clothes.

  I really did feel hungry.

  For lunch we were allocated the usual low-rent buffet – meat in a sauce, pastry tarts, fruit with syrup – while the team were served up small low-calorie organic dishes and all the other appropriate foods. I sidled up to Olivier so that I could get some of the special menu beneath the furious gaze of the studio manager. I just managed to poach a portion of steamed chicken before she wrapped everything up, staring at me as if I were pulling off the bank heist of the century.

  The afternoon went on for ever – we just waited and waited and waited. The chatterbox was chattering away. At around three o’clock, Olivier came to tell me it would be my turn ‘soon’. A few moments later, a very tall girl with a large mouth appeared; she looked exhausted and exasperated. I recognised Lindsey Wixson, the catwalk star, who the team had just greeted with the respect befitting her status. She had to go through the make-up, hair and hanging around routine just like the rest of us. Sometimes even the luxury clothes hangers had to wait too. Lindsey got agitated, stood up, sat down, got up again and paced up and down. And then suddenly, without a word, she began to cry, discreetly at first, but then she burst out sobbing uncontrollably.

  I understood, because I’d been there myself. I thought back to that day in Milan when I too had cracked up beneath the triumphant gaze of the Russian wasps. I’d thought to myself that I’d never be an elite model, because the elite models never cracked up, but here was proof that they did.

  The team looked after her well, getting her to sit down, consoling her and redoing her make-up. They assured her that they understood that she was tired, what with this crazy life, the time difference and the endless flights, and they let her go in front of me so that she could get back quickly to the hotel and rest.

  It was gone five when I finally found myself in the presence of the photographer with the same make-up I’d had for the Miu Miu show, wavy hair and an attractive white silk shirt that was fully unbuttoned. He smiled at me, spoke to me and encouraged me. I did what he asked me and I toyed with him. It was free-flowing, professional and really good – an intense and wonderful session that took fifteen minutes flat.

  Once I was outside with Mum, who’d been waiting for an eternity in her Mini, I told her that I didn’t think this profession was for me: hours and hours of nothing and then a quarter of an hour of sheer pleasure.

  ‘I understand, but that’s so like you, Vic. Rollercoasters are your thing. You need heady sensations or else you get bored. I’m sure that the further you go in this profession, the more really memorable moments you’ll have.’

  I wish I’d been as sure as she was.

  As a result, at the next photo shoot – a page for the English magazine Wonderland for which I wore a sublime pair of Louboutins that I would very much have liked to take home with me – I really let myself have some fun. These instants in front of the photographer’s lens are the moments to savour, and I had a ball. I laughed, I danced, I acted the madwoman; the more he encouraged me, the further I went, as if I were an actress who was completely in cha
racter. If this is what my life consisted of, then at least I should make the most of it.

  I was still in that state of post-session excitement when Daniela, the Argentinian make-up artist who I’d had a good chat with while she was getting me ready, said to me a little shyly, ‘You know, Victoire, I’ve got a little sister I adore. She’s very beautiful, she’s 16 and her dream is to become a model.’

  ‘Oh no!’ My reply shot out of my mouth before I had time to think what I was saying. I started explaining myself and then I just couldn’t hold back. I described how difficult this profession was for young girls, how they got treated as objects and how they obsessed over eating and not putting on an ounce, without the issue ever being raised; I told her about the cynicism, the aggressiveness of the other girls, the competitiveness, the solitude, the endless hours spent waiting for so little in return. She couldn’t get over what I was saying, because I looked so happy after my photo shoot! I couldn’t believe either that I was expressing, so emphatically and with such conviction, things that I’d never formulated with such clarity before. It really was time that I thought about my future seriously.

  When I got back home, I had a call from Flo: ‘Victoire, are you sitting comfortably? You’re returning to London on the weekend of 11 November. Miu Miu have chosen you to do their campaign!’

  Mum and I arranged everything so that we could go together: three days in London, the two of us, in a nice hotel paid for by the client! During the day, while I was working, Mum could wander around the art galleries and then we’d spend the evenings together. Sometimes life as a clothes hanger was cool!

  The first day was perfect: we got there in the afternoon, had a little stroll around the streets of London and then had dinner in our beautiful hotel room. I went to bed early without taking an enema – Mum didn’t know about that and I could never have done it in her presence – in order to be on top form the next day: the schedule Flo had sent me stipulated that a chauffeur would pick me up at seven o’clock on the dot and would bring me home at six o’clock. Mert and Marcus, the star pair of photographers of the moment, would be doing the photo shoot.