Modeling Hype Is Ripe For Rip-Offs

They called her Olive Oyl for a good reason.

But by 15, Taryn Hecker’s gawkiness had stretched and rounded into a perfect size 6. Friends looked at her carrot-stick legs, pale skin and dark doe eyes and changed her nickname to Twiggy.

“Everyone said I should model, that I had the shape for it,” Taryn says. “I decided I could make some money for college that way.”

Wrong. Taryn spent more than $1,000 over two years to earn $15 - and she’s no exception. She says she didn’t expect to grace the cover of Seventeen, but her eyes tell a different story.

“This has been discouraging, but I want to keep modeling,” she says.

Taryn suspects she was mismanaged, but her story mirrors the status quo in the modeling industry.

The agent she approached in Spokane two years ago liked her “different” look.

“I knew they were feeding me a line,” Taryn says.

Still, she signed up for the necessary lessons in poise, make-up, runway and mannequin modeling, sitting for the camera. The classes cost $400.

Her first audition was a bust. The second was a cattle call that began in Spokane and ended in Seattle, $500-plus-travel-costs later.

For her money, Taryn got pictures, advice from professional models and snubs from agents.

School pushed modeling to Taryn’s back burner for a while. But last year, she was ready to try again. She interviewed with The Coeur d’Alene Modeling Agency, a business with about 100 clients and a solid reputation in the community and with the Better Business Bureau.

The agency charged $75 to represent Taryn for a year and required her to supply her own pictures - another $100 expense. It promised her nothing more than representation. She modeled for a cable video and a mall bridal show. Both jobs were unpaid.

“I kept thinking someone will see me,” she says.

Taryn finally earned $15 modeling at a luncheon in Spokane. After May, she heard nothing more from the agency, which was sold.

Jennifer Grace, who bought the agency from her sister, says she called Taryn several times but was always one step behind Taryn’s latest move. Last week, Jennifer offered to represent Taryn for another year without charge and Taryn accepted, with no guarantees of paid work.

Melissa Herbert, who’s 16, signed with the same agency last year, spent $375 for modeling classes and modeled twice unpaid. She’s never had a paying job and suspects the agency just wants people to buy its classes.

In that respect, the Coeur d’Alene Modeling Agency is no different from most modeling agencies. It depends on model-wannabes to keep it afloat in a town that doesn’t have a lot of high-paying modeling jobs to support it.

Taryn and Melissa say they learned a lot from the classes - poise, confidence, eye contact. If they’re smart, they’ll use those lessons to find real jobs that fill, instead of drain, their bank accounts.

Dubious honor

Coeur d’Alene’s Jim McLeod is an avid researcher who decided to publish an article on the family hero, Malcolm McLeod, born in 1711. Unfortunately, Jim uncovered information that good old Malcolm may have betrayed his Scottish homeland by offering to spy for the English.

Jim published his findings anyway. “I still hold him in regard because our ancestors, like us, are flawed and human,” he says.

Hope’s Irene Dunn’s great-grandfather was an aide to Ulysses S. Grant (another dubious honor). She’s found some scoundrels in her family history but says she treasures every one.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: How will future generations remember you? Stake your claim to fame with Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@ spokesman.com.