Cameron Russell can guess the question readers have at the end of the memoir documenting her career in fashion, to anyone themselves why, after all, she is still modeling.

Over 244 pages, Russell leaves fashion behind and revisits memory after memory that justifies never looking back. She was discovered one day as a precocious 16-year-old with a dream of becoming President of the United States. In her late teens, she is over exposed to the worst of the curtain culture behind fashion. The photographer is on the lookout for her body and makes sexually suggestive comments; Job after job demands a compromise of Russell's dignity and autonomy for the shot. In her early thirties, Russell has been as successful as most models hope to be, with international magazine covers, lucrative designer campaigns, and a growing presence in the world of community organization and activism.

Still, she feels an increasing ambivalence towards an industry that has spent most of its 20 years. Immediately after giving a TED talk to her profession that racked up 40 million views and international coverage, Russell said that she had "what to say" about herself without scripts

"This question, [why continue modeling], was central to the book, and that's a question I always ask, and of course a question I ask myself." "I hope that when people read the book, they almost feel the universality of that question at this moment."

Continuing to write and work are two ways to show and demand accountability for herself and for the industry she is still participating in. First, by exposing the truth of what happened in the past at makeup trailers and photo studios and late-night work dinners, and secondly, other current models (and f***ing

Russell's memories are hers, but her story overlaps with the models of the decades that came before her. The photographer or agent who dehumanizes Russell as a teenager is a form of fashion history, and repeats. In her book, she sees her public success and private fear reflected in "every model memoir she can find.""

"In my notes, our story begins to blur and I can't remember which words are mine, hers or someone else's," she wrote while turning over the titles of Iman and Naomi Campbell, Brooke Shields, Ashley Graham and Janice Dickinson. It's a great place to start. She counts every time a "perfect" appears on a story or set for decades. (At least dozens.Consistently, she points out, the best model is the one that is "up for nothing" — a euphemism that includes infinitely unpleasant meanings.

A story that transcends these experiences, Russell says, is a journey that many women and people are on. "Resist like exceptions and say that this is a group because, in fact, it's a project we have to do for the whole industry, so heavy

Some of Russell's travels have allowed her to admit her own complicity in the exploitative system of fashion as she gets older." including. "Years go by, and every day I have fewer witnesses and become an accomplice," she wrote in a later passage. She is silent on the set when the non-white model is cut from the cover image, so resolute honesty about the moment when the massive Bran

Russell did not speak out or retreat on the same day as the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh is vital to the project. "The book is part of trying to be responsible, serious, vulnerable and take some risks because I can," she says.

Some readers might pick up memoirs on the hunt for industry gossip; feeling momentary anger at how minors and young women are being exploited to connect the dots between edited names and timestamps in Russell's early stories, and then finding out for model memoirs she read while researching their books. This is a great way to get the most out of your work. (How quickly did the conversation go from the revelation of the 2023 documentary The Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, or from Emily Ratajkowski's revelation of My Body in 2021?)There is no point in this approach. 

Russell is as honest with fashion as she has, especially when readers are coming to the book from within the glossy world of runway and magazine shooting "Pull back the curtains and this is an industry filled with people who can actually change it," she says. "I hope this book is something that calls on people in our industry to access and see themselves as very serious and very ambitious about what we can do at this moment in history," he said.

Modeling as a profession goes nowhere after 1 more explosive memoir; Neither is a multi-billion-dollar network filled with countless other problems where modeling is just one aspect.

One book and one person cannot reform the industry, but they can make more people pay attention and take action. "We have to take fashion seriously, and we have to be ambitious in this area," Russell says. "What other options do you have?"