Years ago I remember reading stories of a market for "White" guys to rent themselves out for business meetings in China. If you looked anglo, and could look presentable in a suit, the Chinese companies would hire you to make them look more serious as though you were their American officer/VP.<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.people/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.peop...</a>
Wow, there's a cottage industry for booking young models as fake national beauty contest winners to participate in fake international beauty contests. The quotes are surreal:<p>"My first stint as Miss America for hire had been that September, in the desert oasis of Dunhuang, for the city’s International Grape Festival. It was a surreal experience in which 40 models, including me, were paid to walk down a catwalk for about 2,000 locals. Later, we rode camels across the dunes of the Gobi Desert, crisscrossing the sand in single file. The photos of all 40 of us on camelback—some only in bras, to dodge tanlines—are wonderfully absurd."<p>"For the second pageant, in October, I was hired to cruise around Dalian in a fake gold Mercedes golf cart with five other girls for three days, in an effort to lure potential buyers into investing in a miniature replica of Versailles. A printed guide to the event offered fictitious backstories in Chinese about each contestant, and her purpose there."<p>"Of the nine 'fashion shows' I booked while in Beijing, only two were on a runway. The rest were fake pageants, car shows, and trade shows—but I was not informed of their nature until I was en route to the events. Models flagged as having low earning potential will do fake pageants frequently, as they’re easy to book. I once met a Russian teenager who was stuck traveling on a bus for 10 days across rural China as 'Miss Argentina.'"
That's the modeling business. Talk to anyone who's done it. Below the top 100 or so supermodels in the world, models make less than a mid-range programmer. Most modeling jobs aren't glamorous. There's trade show work, being a "booth bimbo". There's catalog modeling ("OK, next is item 25631, the blue sweater, and hurry it up, we have twenty more to shoot before lunch"). Mostly there's doing something else while waiting for the next gig. Ask any actress/model/waitress in LA. It's a really short career, too; at 25, you're over the hill.
The voice in this article is very familiar. Is this the same author of the woman that wrote about high-worth dating in New York? Living in a hotel room with multiple women while going on dates with rich guys... I can't remember the details and I've done some initial google searches but haven't found the original.<p>The voice, the situations, etc in this article feel similar to what I remember of this other article.
Agreed - beautifully surreal quotes, lovely writing style, fascinating subject.<p>She wrote a piece back in January[1] that gives a lot more insight into the logistical and management aspects of the arrangement, as well as the risks (financial and physical).<p>[1] <a href="http://fashionista.com/2014/01/model-in-china" rel="nofollow">http://fashionista.com/2014/01/model-in-china</a>
I just don't understand this fascination of Asian, and more so East Asian peoples, with the West. Replica of Eiffel tower? Why would you want that when you have the forbidden city, the great wall and maybe countless oriental palaces??<p>Especially after how badly China was treated by most western countries (and Japan) during the Qing dynasty.
The whole culture behind this is also an interesting phenomenon: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai#Shanzhai_culture" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai#Shanzhai_culture</a>