I subscribe to Urban Daddy, even though I suspect it's geared more toward men (the name is a dead giveaway, for one). They usually write about the new hot restaurants and bars, and sometimes they even have sample sale listings, but every once in awhile, they have me scratching my head. Case in point, yesterday's email, about Beauty Holding, a website where you can "invest in" models. What? Yes. Basically, you can invest as much money as you want; once a model reaches $10,000, Beauty Holding promises to send her off to Paris and London for photo shoots and to introduce her to European agencies. The model then splits her earnings 50-50 with the site; for every $100 you invest, you get 1% of her earnings. Of course, this is a bum deal for both models and investors. For the latter, I know the economy is bad, but even an interest checking account has a better rate of return. For the former, 50% is a ridiculous commission for a model; agencies normally take 20% max. Yes, we're in the Web 2.0 age of social networking and MySpace and all that, but is this really the future of the modeling industry? The agencies are exploitative enough as it is; this is taking it a bit too far, if you ask me. But still, I don't know what's more sad--the women who are posting their photos (chiefly of the swimsuit-model type) here, or the skeevy men who are investing in them.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Not so much: model sponsorship
I subscribe to Urban Daddy, even though I suspect it's geared more toward men (the name is a dead giveaway, for one). They usually write about the new hot restaurants and bars, and sometimes they even have sample sale listings, but every once in awhile, they have me scratching my head. Case in point, yesterday's email, about Beauty Holding, a website where you can "invest in" models. What? Yes. Basically, you can invest as much money as you want; once a model reaches $10,000, Beauty Holding promises to send her off to Paris and London for photo shoots and to introduce her to European agencies. The model then splits her earnings 50-50 with the site; for every $100 you invest, you get 1% of her earnings. Of course, this is a bum deal for both models and investors. For the latter, I know the economy is bad, but even an interest checking account has a better rate of return. For the former, 50% is a ridiculous commission for a model; agencies normally take 20% max. Yes, we're in the Web 2.0 age of social networking and MySpace and all that, but is this really the future of the modeling industry? The agencies are exploitative enough as it is; this is taking it a bit too far, if you ask me. But still, I don't know what's more sad--the women who are posting their photos (chiefly of the swimsuit-model type) here, or the skeevy men who are investing in them.
I subscribe to Urban Daddy, even though I suspect it's geared more toward men (the name is a dead giveaway, for one). They usually write about the new hot restaurants and bars, and sometimes they even have sample sale listings, but every once in awhile, they have me scratching my head. Case in point, yesterday's email, about Beauty Holding, a website where you can "invest in" models. What? Yes. Basically, you can invest as much money as you want; once a model reaches $10,000, Beauty Holding promises to send her off to Paris and London for photo shoots and to introduce her to European agencies. The model then splits her earnings 50-50 with the site; for every $100 you invest, you get 1% of her earnings. Of course, this is a bum deal for both models and investors. For the latter, I know the economy is bad, but even an interest checking account has a better rate of return. For the former, 50% is a ridiculous commission for a model; agencies normally take 20% max. Yes, we're in the Web 2.0 age of social networking and MySpace and all that, but is this really the future of the modeling industry? The agencies are exploitative enough as it is; this is taking it a bit too far, if you ask me. But still, I don't know what's more sad--the women who are posting their photos (chiefly of the swimsuit-model type) here, or the skeevy men who are investing in them.
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