B Model: An Embellished Memoir

All the casualties were out for Vivienne Westwood. It didn’t help that it was winter and freezing - so much translucent skin stretched over brittle boneshapes, threatening to snap through the skin. Rumour had it that Jodie Kidd had been sent home because she was too fat …

Justine is an awkward sixteen-year-old, unhappy at school and out of favour with her mother, who would like to see her daughter smarten up and look like a young lady for a change. One day while grocery shopping in the Sydney suburbs, Justine is spotted by a model’s agent. Submitting to her mother’s ultimatum - the agency or deportment school - Justine chooses the former and immediately finds herself in Tokyo modelling underwear. It is a fast track to London and the international modelling circuit from there. Justine, now ‘Justin’ because of a mistake on her publicity cards, joins the hundreds of other ‘B models’, those hungry boys and girls who make up the numbers, live the lifestyle and crave the comfort that life as a supermodel would bring.