While interviewing for a “Booking Editor” position at a start-up magazine last week, I was thrown into a model casting to test my skills. One by one, over thirty male and female models pranced — or crept — into the casting room; several were giddy and outwardly confident, but most were unable to mask their diffidence.

The male models were classic mimbos plucked from an Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, boasting interests like “surfing, skateboarding, and working out at the gym.” The girls were predominantly waifish, Eastern European imports with delicately sculpted features, wide eyes, and knobby limbs – a collective of frightened deer in headlights – who claimed to “dance” or “play tennis” in their spare time. The twisted theme of the fashion spread was something along the lines of, “A Futuristic Family: The Dominatrix Mother and her Sexually Abused Children.”

Not surprisingly, the Creative Director turned his nose up at the mimbos (their golden-retriever-like affects didn’t fit the mold) and squirmed in excitement over the excessively thin, vulnerable looking Russian and Swedish sylphs. But it’s important that the Booking Editor maintain an air of insouciance in order to intimidate the frail, young models (though they already seemed starved of self-esteem to me).

- Lizzie Crocker

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