Elena Velez, NY Fashion Week, and the Existential Dread of an Open Casting Call

"Who doesn't want to look like a bog witch with cockroach nails, emerging from a chthonic swamp?"

One gnarly humid summer day, neighboring a microneighborhood known semi-pejoratively as Dimes Square, an extensive line of youths are parked along East Broadway, stretching from Jefferson Street down to Rutgers, dressed in assorted tank tops, skirts, and jeans. They have come from near and far for an open casting call as advertised on Elena Velez's Instagram account boasting around 75.1k followers. In response to the call for unsigned models, one of the comments on Velez’s Instagram post said "you should pay your models." 

The demand for payment struck me as obnoxious. To my eye, modeling seems superfluous – why not have it operate as a gift economy and let anybody do it if they want to? Of course that won’t do, since fashion, and by extension art, follows the logic of scarcity and exclusivity. While models are undoubtedly expendable and vulnerable to exploitation, they’re also an expression of seduction through exploitation. The profession is a great deal more desirable than a lot of unpleasant (and much more exploitative) jobs. Surplus labor and leisure time is all the more obfuscated by social media. Unless you're on the level of a super-influencer getting paid for sponsored posts, most amateur models or model-adjacent types (actors, dancers, and so on) expect their creative energies to be traded for clout ("exposure") or other perks (like clothing) or ephemeral enjoyment in lieu of cash.