Signed my teen to a talent agency and I have feelings
Plus remembering Cover Shots International by sharing mine (I actually cannot believe I'm doing this)
A hot May evening in Glasgow is never not a surprise even when you’re days-deep into a long run of them. The sun is streaming through the vast windows beside me and I’m having to hold my arms away from my perimenopausal body so the beads of sweat have a chance of missing my thick t-shirt. I want them to course unimpeded down to my elbows where I can discreetly wipe them away with the backs of my hands.
Glamour, guys.
I’m in the Grainstore on the banks of the Clyde. I presume it used to be an actual grain store but is now one of the city’s many decommissioned industrial buildings reimagined as a multi-purpose creative space (see also: The Whisky Bond, The Pipe Factory, The Glue Factory… ). True to type, it’s all Crittall windows, exposed brickwork and polished concrete; a surface that – on closer inspection – is splattered with daubs of paint that I’m going to say made their way there intentionally.
My daughter is about to have headshots taken for the talent agency she’s joining and she and her best pal are sitting opposite me – not a bead of sweat between them – debating whether the grey or the black t-shirt will go best with the jeans. They’re also scrolling and listening to their own music which means there’s no attention going spare for the industry taking place on the other side of the room. I have plenty, though it's not really helping with the whole keeping cool thing.
In between the flashes and beeps of his camera, the “Top Scottish Photographer” is coaching another young teenager.
“Don’t over stretch.”
“Smile. You can do it. Chin up, follow me round.”
“Imagine you’re watching TV. Casual, relaxed.”
“I’ve got more shots in the past couple of minutes now you’re relaxed on the sofa than I did in ten minutes over there.”
I can tell she’s new to it because she's smiling and posing like she’s having her school photo taken. This is a good thing because it shows she's not yet wise to what it means to be observed (by men) from the outside. In this environment, though, I'm stressing on her behalf wanting to go and give some gentler direction than the photographer is offering. I can see her dad on his phone over on one of the sofas paying zero attention to what’s going on. l also watched the girl who was being shot before this one whose mother hovered at the photographer’s shoulder giving her (unwanted?) directorial tuppence and can’t decide what’s worse.
In contrast to the silent sympathy I’m extending now, I had a moment where I saw that first girl in the cruellest terms: as completion for the jobs I want my daughter to be offered. As far as I can see, watching her across the table laughing with her pal, she couldn't give a fuck about any of the other girls. Oh dear. Maybe instead of worrying about my teenager adapting to this new world, I should be more concerned with how I will.
Half an hour later, it's her turn and she gives it Blue Steel shot after shot. She looks like she belongs here, which I suppose I shouldn’t have doubted given she’s served a lengthy apprenticeship on TikTok.
After we leave, I wonder if I’d been hoping she might bottle it under the lights and decide the thing I’d resisted saying yes to (toxic messaging around bodies; the rejection; a girl’s beauty as currency; possible impact on attitudes to food; exercise yada yada) was something she no longer wanted to do. A wee bit. But then I admit how relieved I’d been to see her effortlessly give the photographer what he wanted. Unlike girl two, she's internalised what it means to be looked at and what looks good. Should I have opinions about this or just accept it’s (still) part of a young girl's experience of adolescence?
And what does it say when I tell you I was also proud? Loving it for her? She was gorgeous. Poised. Relaxed. If I’d carried myself with such confidence at her age, I’d have been a different teenager altogether, I think. It's a whole complicated soup, really, which goes some way to explaining why the first girl triggered me, the second got my sympathy and why I worried so much about my own. They've made me think of the girl I was three decades ago just half a mile away.
Get ready, because she’s coming. A 14 year old whose own dream of a modelling future was born and died on the same spring day in early 1998, the results preserved in soft focus — largely unseen — since the heavy leatherbound album arrived in the post a few weeks later.
I’m not sure how Mum came into possession of a flyer for Cover Shots International, but I do know she was on a weekend pass from the psychiatric unit (alarm bells!) at the time we went. Let’s save the discussion for another day on how these franchises preyed on the vulnerable with their promise to reveal and immortalise the hitherto undiscovered beauty of average-looking housewives. Instead, let's just say that for an awkward 90s teen, any concern I might have been harbouring was swiftly set aside by the seductive prospect of a professional makeover and photos to prove it had happened. I wanted to be beautiful just as much as the next girl given the perpetual disappointment of the images captured on our disposable cameras.
The studio was in Merchant City. Until this week, I’d remembered an unassuming doorway in a different part of town but I went to Mum's on Thursday to dig out the albums and found the receipt with the address on. The studios had been in yet another former warehouse, now a listed building:
I remember a reception area up some stairs with lots of family group and individual photos on the walls. There’s one clear in my mind of a teenager with freckles and long, straight strawberry blonde hair lying on a white surface, her hair splayed out like rays of the sun. There were sunflowers around her, or maybe she was holding one? I wanted to look like that. Cute, lively, lovely.
The photographer and the hair and makeup up person were both women but I remember any initial trust I’d had in them quickly evaporating. The makeup was heavy, the hair ageing. Even with my own clothes on, I looked and felt nothing like myself. I felt frumpy. Awkward. Ugly. Still, they were all encouraging and Mum kept telling me how lovely I looked so I manfully complied with yet more of the cheesy poses they arranged me in. Once we’d exhausted the clothes from home, I allowed them to truss me up in various denim and animal print bits and bobs from the prop box. I even said yes to a hat. A HAT.
After we were done, shit got serious. Mum was completely bowled over with them all and in her case the transformation was indeed remarkable which was little wonder, really, given how long she’d been ill. Swept up in the excitement, she ordered whole albums for the pair of us which she had to take out a four figure payment plan to fund. I was far too young then to counsel her out of spending thousands of pounds she didn't have, even when deep down I probably knew it was a massive mistake. The buyer's remorse would come with her next depressive episode, but that day she was riding high and I wasn’t going to break the spell. I’ve still never told her how much I hated these photos.
Ok, we’re going in. I give you five of the very worst best:
When I picked up the album the other day and steeled myself to open it for the first time in at least 20 years, I was prepared to feel all kinds of things. Embarrassment. Disgust. Anger. Shame even, but time’s a healer. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I laughed because they’re ridiculous, but there was affection for the wee girl who was maybe 18 months shy of the realisations her Gen Z-er entered adolescence with. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Gen X-ers and elder Millennials grew up so clueless. That childhoods were longer than they seem to be now.
Back home, the album provided a good half hour of entertainment. I’m used to being the butt of their jokes but once that was out of the way my elder one stuck about, curious for the first time about what had been happening in my life at that time. I think she was imagining me as a girl of her age for the first time, which is something I’ve been doing in reverse with her for years. At one point, she used her hands to block out the shit clothes, the props and the old lady hair, and remarked that she saw her own eyes and her own smile reflected back at her. That felt good.
Her own pictures will be ready this week and I know they’ll be brilliant. It won’t be for me to tell her though. I just hope she gets what she needs and wants from them, for it’s one thing your mother telling you you look nice and quite another being able to see it and appreciate it for yourself.
Loved the storytelling and interweaving of different timelines in this piece! I had a very clear narrative in my head as a teen which was 'red hair = not attractive' so no modelling head shots in my personal history (I want to go back and give teenage me a big hug and also burn down some parts of 1990s popular culture). I took Art at A-level though where we spent many lessons doing life drawings of each other (clothes on!). I hated every drawing of me at the time, but I remember looking through an archive of those drawings with a friend when we were in our mid 20s and marvelling at how we'd managed to catch something real and true of our younger selves on the cusp of adulthood.
Loved this. I had my photo taken yesterday funnily enough. I was on a retreat day and a friend wanted to photograph us individually as a keepsake. I was against it at first. I was feeling tired and washed out. But I went for it. My friend relaxed me and kept softly saying you're beautiful. You're beautiful. She captured a photo of me that looked really natural in the end. The key is relaxing into who we are. Thank you for your wonderful storytelling. I can never resist reading it early Sunday morning with my tea.