Girl Model

Girl Model is a documentary that follows Nadya Vall, 13-year-old aspiring model from Siberia village and a former model and scout Ashley Arbaugh. This documentary is disturbing on so many levels as it unfolds ugly side of glamorized industry. Nadya was recruited by Arbaugh and this 13-year-old “child” was promised $8000 for doing two modeling jobs in Tokyo, Japan. It is apparently the minimum requirement to obtain Japanese work visa. Nadya’s impoverished parents still support their daughter on her journey to Tokyo. Nadya’s success in modeling business could be a ticket for an entire family to escape their poverty. Nadya was told that somebody would be picking her up at Narita Airport, but there was no one there to pick her up at the airport. Upon her arrival at Narita, Nadya’s struggle began in Japan. She doesn’t even speak English phrases let alone any Japanese.

The second main character in this film is Ashley, a former model who has been a successful scout. She travels to Eastern European countries and recruit “young” almost pubescent skinny girls that Japanese modeling agencies are often seeking. In the film, she says she doesn’t feel passionate about modeling industry. As a matter of fact, she hated modeling and working as a model drove her to deep depression. But she keeps doing her job, which is to recruit naive young girls that are often under 15 years old through deception. Girls recruited by Ashley and their families believe in false promises. As the story goes, viewers will discover that Nadya and another model from Russia don’t have the “jobs” waiting in Tokyo and they are taken from one casting to another without getting paid. Nadya’s roommate, another aspiring young model were staying in a tiny studio apartment in Tokyo, which they are renting against the “debt”. Nadya’s roommate was from an upper middle class family and could speak  a little English. After reading her contract carefully, she realized that the agency will send her home if her measurement could change by 1cm so she purposely ate more to be terminated from this contract. She was sent back to Russia with more than $2000 debt.

By the time, I was watching Nadya’s ups and downs hopelessly, and I can imagine other viewers’ frustrations over the obvious exploitation, manipulation and we are concerned how this can happen? These girls are 13 years old..they are children! They are unsupervised most of the times going from one place to another as instructed on papers and they both break down in tears a few times in the film. More disturbing fact is that Nadya now 18 or 19 years old recently released a statement that the film did not depict the reality or her real experience as an aspiring model in Japan and that she was taken care of by the NOAH model agency and she feels humiliated by the film, which portrays her as a victim.

At the end, Ashley (scout) talks about some girls slipping into sex industry in order to make ends meet because modeling is extremely competitive. and Although NOAH modeling agency sends girls to all over the counties, Japan, China, Hong-Kong, Indonesia are least prestigious and least promising for aspiring model like Nadya but obviously she is still represented by NOAH model agency..very creepy! and she is currently working as a model in Asia. My feeling is that this is almost like human trafficking and sadly this happens in every industry.