How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone

January 22, 2024
Supermodel and activist Russell catalogs the psychic toll of a career in front of the camera in her candid and confrontational debut. Scouted to model as a naive 16-year-old in 2003, Russell quickly learned that producing the desired poses and reactions for much older photographers resulted in lucrative bookings and referrals, while questions or expressions of discomfort­—in response to intimate touches from strangers, for example, or requests for sexually explicit poses—earned her a reputation as “difficult.” As Russell became more well-known, she grew increasingly eager to please the industry’s gatekeepers and power brokers, compartmentalizing her feelings along the way (“The way to stop reacting is to put the self away so there’s nobody to offend, to blame, to ignore”). Eventually, however, those feelings spilled over, and in the 2010s, Russell began organizing with fellow models to expose abuses of power across the industry. Readers expecting a standard model memoir are likely to be surprised by Russell’s forceful style and devastating revelations, which recall the frankness of Julia Fox’s Down the Drain. It’s an impressive and illuminating dispatch from the front lines of the fashion industry. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary.