(from elq-magazine.blogspot.com)
"Sometimes I'll see another model on the street and we will nod 'hey' to each other. It's like a club." I want to join! Lol
- male model Petey Wright from Ford
In New York Magazine's article,
"Petey and the Boys:
The wandering days and bunk-bed nights of Fashion Week’s handsome rookies"
I read about the life of a male model. I never realized how expensive modeling is, (for both sexes)
Excerpts:
"Financially speaking, male modeling is not unlike being a straight-male porn star: The men have always made less than the women, and very few become big names. For most magazine work, models are paid less than $250. Twenty percent of that goes to the agency, which also bills models for their board and expenses. “Sometimes you get charged for things you never thought of,” says Petey, “like $30 a month to be on the website.”
Almost all of the male models I meet seem straight. “Gay models will go down in history as the biggest misconception about the male modeling world,” says Ferguson.
But being straight doesn’t seem to make any difference backstage, where the female models are avoiding the male models like at recess in elementary school. The women are preened over by stylists, surrounded by fashion reporters, while the guys just hang around and smoke. Maybe it’s the discrepancy in income and age—the girls all seem to be highly paid 15-year-olds. “They seem, I don’t know, really serious,” says AJ.
Ford maintains two male-model apartments—one in Greenpoint and one in a high-rise in Chinatown—but agencies have them all over the city. In the Greenpoint apartment, there are five bedrooms, each with at least two sets of bunk beds, plus a central room with a large kitchen and living room that contains a Chuck Norris–style exercise machine. A model named Will Anderson found the place and persuaded Ford to let him be the super and manager. At 36 years old, he is like the stern Mrs. Garrett in the house. He has lived in model apartments for ten years now, and in 2006 he self-published a coffee-table photo book called Apt. 301, a collection of his snapshots of sexy boy models sleeping, eating, and horsing around in messy rooms and rumpled sheets."
He sounds a little weary, and lonely. “You get up and get on a plane, go through customs alone, your cell phone doesn’t work, you don’t talk to your friends. I’m in a weird state right now. I’m not sure what I really want.”
He’d mostly prefer to stay in Nashville, especially now that he’s trying to rekindle things with Sally.
But his agents are urging him to get back to New York, fast. “They told me it’s a vital time in my career,” he says. Vman and Ford just announced the winners of the second-annual Model Search, and the model apartments will soon be filled with a new crop of pretty faces. Last year’s boys will have to hustle. "
Ouch
___________
But Petey's cute, and he looks like he'll last. I really do hope he's successful.
(photos found on Google)
XOXO
-Mo
