Girl Model

Eye-opening subject matter, slow pacing
I am interested in the subject of modeling, so was very jazzed to watch this documentary. What was disturbing is how this particular modeling "agency" took girls from Siberia, telling them how they could make big money, to Tokyo for "modeling" sessions. They put these particular dirt-poor girls (who didn't speak any English or Japanese) up in a crappy apartment in Tokyo, took them to go-sees, did not bother to take good pictures of the girls, and didn't seem to give them any traveling expense money (so they could eat). There were no modeling lessons or training. The girls had no control over the pictures that were taken of them, were not informed where they would show up, and sometimes were not even paid for them. The girls were unable to ask basic questions of the people around them. At the end of their contracts, the modeling agency informs them that they didn't make any money, and in fact they are in debt to the modeling agency for the expenses of their...

Watching this will make you think...
It is easy to point the finger at Ashley and say she's horrible. (Which she is.) But her horrible behavior is enabled by her boss Tigran, who is in turn enabled by the industry that prizes/fetishizes the bodies of 13 year old girls. That industry is enabled by consumers who put up with this crap, and countries who don't prosecute/stop the modeling agencies that are employing/scamming children. If Tigran and Ashley were arrested, someone else would step in. If people said "yuck, I don't want to look like that 13 year old in a dress" things would start to change.

So yeah, there's a lot that's horrible going on here.. and in many ways most of us have a little bit of responsibility in the chain of blame. Maybe you even have a little more responsibility after you see this film, now that you know what is going on.

Overall this documentary is quite good. How the directors got Ashley to talk as much as she does is a mystery. She even invites the cameras to her sad "glass...

Raises great questions, offers few answers
Girl Model has a low-key style but a shocking story of Nadya a 13-year old Russian girl sent to Japan as an aspiring model and Ashley the American recruiter who trolls the towns of Siberia looking for 'fresh faces'.

Nadya, speaking neither Japanese nor English arrives alone in Tokyo and has to find her way by herself. She spends weeks going to castings without even money for food. Her contract, written in English not Russian, says if she gains even a centimeter on her hips she can be fired, it also allows the agency to change the terms unilaterally.

The system is dirty, the girls are promised fame and fortune but most leave without a modeling job and deeply in debt. Ashley swings wildly from denouncing the system she is a part of to justifying it, to willingly turning a blind eye to what might happen to young teens left alone in a strange country.

The direction is very low-key, we never hear or see the documentary makers, only the subjects. No...

Click to Editorial Reviews