Size Zero: My Life as a Disappearing Model - Victoire Dauxerre

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how life worked? Going with the flow and letting life take decisions for me? Letting it take me wherever it wanted to take me? Ultimately, there was nothing I had to do personally, except do what I was told and do it to perfection in order to become the best. And stop eating, straight away.

      Mum was waiting for me in her old Austin Mini on the Avenue Montaigne – getting the metro in this heat was more than I could face. ‘So, what did they say, then?’

      I gave her the low-down. Flo, Vladimir, Gérald, the contract, the Polaroid session, the walking lessons and the measurements.

      ‘An inch around the hips is quite a lot, Loutch. You’ve never been so slim, and you’ve got an iron will!’

      She was right. But I was going to become a supermodel, the supermodel who everybody wanted a piece of. I was going to have a dazzling rise to the top, earn loads of money and kick off my adult life in an incredible way.

      I had just turned 18, Elite thought I was terrific, and in September I’d be in New York! When I got home, I weighed myself. At 5 foot 10 and weighing 58 kilos, I could get into a size 8. So I’d need to lose at least three 3 kilos to reach size 6, and three more to get to size 4. It was 2 July and the first castings in New York were starting at the beginning of September, so I had eight weeks to reach a weight of 52 kilos. Or let’s say 50, so that I had a bit of leeway. That meant a kilo a week, which I should be able to manage.

      I spent the rest of the evening on the internet, browsing sites and blogs by girls who offered slimming tips. It was pretty straightforward, in fact: I would just eat fruit. And more specifically, apples, because the pectin in them makes you feel full. I’d eat them three times a day, chewing tiny pieces very slowly, like Mum does when she eats a pain aux raisins. It was the same as preparing for my Bac or the Sciences Po exam: I just had to remain focused on my objective. I’d done it before and I could do it again. It shouldn’t be a major obstacle – it was just a question of willpower. And I had plenty of willpower.

       Playing With My Body

      Two days later, Mum dropped me off in front of the grimy old façade of a disused shop in the 10th arrondissement. I checked twice to make sure that this really was the address where I was supposed to meet Seb for my first photo session, tapped in the code and pushed open a rickety door which gave onto a dimly lit staircase with a grubby carpet. I very nearly turned around and left. It was quite a contrast to the agency on the Avenue Montaigne! At the bottom of the stairs, I came to a dark and cluttered room. At the far end, in front of a large mirror, there was a small table piled high with dirty clothes and a heap of spent make-up tubes. Syringes and used condoms were scattered across the filthy floor. What was I doing here?

      A smiling Seb appeared in the frame of a little door hidden off to the side in the shadows, accompanied by a sort of hairy giant whose huge belly was spilling out of a T-shirt that was much too small for him. No need to panic. Mum knew where I was and I could call her at any moment. Plus, I knew Seb and it wasn’t in his interests for anything to happen to me.

      Seb introduced me to Sergei the photographer, who took hold of me as if I were a rag doll and planted a huge kiss on both my cheeks. I felt myself relaxing – the guy was a big teddy bear, who spoke English with a Serbian accent you could cut with a knife. He told me I was ‘wonderful’, that he was ‘so happy to have the honour’ of doing my very first photo session and that I had nothing to worry about, because we were going to have ‘so much fun together’. He led me into his studio, which was a large, very brightly lit room with a huge roll of something that looked like white paper hanging from the ceiling and spiralling down to the floor, partially covering it. The light cast by two large projectors was both soft and bright. It was exactly what I’d imagined a photo studio might look like.

      Seb was pleased to see that I’d followed his instructions to the letter: skinny jeans, shirt and denim jacket. Sergei politely asked me to take off my jacket and my bra, pointing to an adjoining room where I could get changed. When I returned, he came over to me and in a very considerate way said, ‘Can I?’ I nodded and he undid several buttons of my shirt. I felt both embarrassed and at ease – I could sense that he respected me.

      During the two hours that the session lasted, Sergei always asked permission before touching me – each and every time. He asked me to move into the middle of the paper, which was in fact a kind of very luminous fabric, got behind his camera and said, ‘OK.’ Yes, but OK what? I had no idea what he was expecting of me. And so, patiently and kindly, he explained and guided me through things in his Anglo-Serbian jabber. I needed to relax. To put my weight on one leg to get a sway into my hips. To lower my head and raise my eyes. To play with my body.

      Playing with my body – what a strange experience it was for me! I was 18 years old, with a woman’s body but the outlook of a well-behaved little girl. That was no doubt why Hugo had left me – after a few weeks of gentle smooching and lengthy and passionate conversations about literature, his hand crept a bit lower than my breasts and a bit higher than my thighs. He sensed my reticence: it was the first time a boy had touched me like that. I wasn’t ready, or even sure if I wanted to be. He said that it wasn’t a problem, that we’d take our time and that he’d be patient. The following week, he was gone. That was where I was at with body games when Sergei tactfully started encouraging me to be ‘more sexy, baby’, to open my shirt, undo my trousers, prostrate myself languidly on the floor and surrender myself up to his lens. I went along with it and let him do what he wanted to do, because he was extremely kind and professional.

      He enticed me into playing the game. The less tense my body became, the more I started to enjoy myself. ‘I love it, darling. Wonderful! Look up for me! Look down for me! Give me more, baby!’ I swung my hips, ran my hands through my hair and crawled around like a cat in front of his lens, looking into his eyes. I changed my outfit, opened my shirt, undid my trousers. I struck the poses and began to understand the rules a little. I forgot all about Seb and just had a good time with Sergei. It was novel, funny, sexy perhaps, but without being sexual, surprising, strange and exciting …

      Seb congratulated me on the session. ‘You did very well, but next time it must be a flesh-coloured thong and bra. That’s one of the basics of the profession. Underwear you can’t see, even in see-through clothes.’

      There was no way I could have known that, but I should at least have thought of wearing some lingerie that was halfway presentable. The shame when I took off my jeans and realised I was wearing the tattiest pair of knickers in my whole pantie drawer!

      As I was leaving, Sergei took hold of me again and planted a big kiss on both cheeks. I deployed my best English to thank him for having been so sweet and so delicate with me. ‘Good luck, Victoire, and thank you for this beautiful moment.’

      After this brilliant photo session, time seemed to speed up. There was no time to see Sophie and tell her about my adventures as a future global muse or hear about her trials and tribulations as a future student of journalism, or to spend an evening with cousin Thomas. I was booked for the fashion week in New York at the start of September, the one in Milan at the end of September, and the one in Paris in early October. If I’d understood correctly, in each city the idea was to do as many castings as possible during the first week and hope to be chosen for the fashion shows in the second week. If I was lucky enough to get noticed, after the fashion weeks I might be chosen to do photo shoots for the magazines, for all the catalogues of the brands and even – joy of joys – for one of their ad campaigns. That was the ultimate goal: to be chosen for a campaign, to become the face of a brand and to be paid a fortune for it.

      While waiting for glory, and before flying off to the States with my family on 11 August as planned, I still had to arrange a couple of walking lessons, an appointment with Dad’s lawyer friend to go through the contract, a meeting at Elite to sign the contract and take possession of my book and my comp cards, and another one with Silent, the agency that would be representing me in New York. I had to do all that before heading off in the last week of July and the first week of August to Marseille, where we’d be joined by my grandparents at the lovely house

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