With the recent passing of top model Tom Nicon, rumors were rife that Tom may have taken his own life. Of course this has been unconfirmed, but the very fact he lost his life had the fashion elite nervously wondering if he had taken his life due to the extraordinary pressures for even those who work as the purveyors of beauty-the models, who frequently undergo neurotic bouts and depression swings. Whether this was true for Tom or not we will never know – but the fact it was the first thing that popped up in people’s minds has the industry wondering, and for good reason.
He is the eighth model to die in the last two years (including Ambrose Olsen and Lina Marulanda this year alone). As a fellow model said this afternoon, “People think we are young and beautiful and rich and happy. But we’re not. We go to castings and the directors take one look at us and then we’re dismissed. You spend your whole life wondering what’s wrong with you. Why didn’t I get that job? You’re competing with your friends, you’re away from your family. The pressure is huge. It’s not the fairytale life people would expect.”
And then there was the recent article courtesy of our frenemies Gawker which questioned the legitimacy of American Apparel’s hiring practices. The article goes on at length to point out that there’s something fishy with respect to the way AA go about hiring retail associates and how even retail associates need to send in photos of themselves which need to be approved by headquarters: Here are some of the comments Gawker received from AA employees themselves…
These [biases] based on attractiveness are 100% accurate. Throughout my years there, I was repeatedly forced to deal with unprofessional, and unqualified corporate employees. There’s no way that these 19 year old girls had the foggiest idea how to manage entire districts of retail stores. I was always confused as to why these was always some overly-sexualized young woman on the arm of every male employee with a job at the factory. Why did they need “assistants”?…
At the time of hiring someone new, it’s true, they had to be good looking. My manager didn’t like the policy, but enforced it. The only girls that were not totally emaciated were forced to work back-stock. So as not to disgust the customers with their average sized hips. God forbid. Photographs had to be taken. We were told how to dress, down to how we weren’t to wear makeup.
If Dov had it his way, every employee at AA would be barely legal, emaciated, and wearing a lace tank-thong with high heels…Horrible man. Horrible company. Horrible quality of clothing. Horrible everything.
