Confessions Part 8: Work APnea

By Agata Descroix – @agatacruz
An excerpt from her book – Confessions of An Autistic And Sexually Confused International Model

I am just landing in Santiago after the Atacama desert, when my booker already calls me:

“Agata! You have very important shows now and you are already late. A driver is expecting you at the terminal exit and will drive you to the place! Alice is also going with you so you can tell her.”

I don’t know why but today, I feel like a Paris Fashion Week off-duty model, with my leather legging and my sunglasses, dragging my little suitcase and talking on the phone. I am so happy Alice is going with me. The driver is waving at us through the exit window and we get into the car, completely exhausted. It’s good I meditated a lot on the plane because it calms me down very much and I can handle a very tight schedule without losing my nerves. I feel so good. The car is neat and clean. Of course people can think that we are lucky to have a car driving us from one job to the next one but actually, we will both pay half of it and it will be deduced out of our statement.

What nobody knows is that models pay a lot of things. Not directly, but charged as an agency debt. The agency paid my flight from Mexico and I already have a US$ 1,700 debt to begin. It gets bigger with the rent, the pocket money, the comcards (if they print them), the book, the paid test-shoots and eventually the doctor, dermatologist, nutritionist, the magazine we have to buy to cut the pages we put in our portfolios and so on… I am positive now; it means my debt is solved and I actually make money but lots of models end up with nothing at the end of three months, just because they only made enough cash to give back the money that the agency lends to them.

It’s very frustrating and I hope I will never have this kind of problems. In Hong Kong, the story was different because I just had one job with Ellipse*. I imagine that if I would have worked my ass off, just solved my debt and come back with nothing… I would have been so angry and depressed.

After five long days filming the beer commercial, Alice and I are immediately sent to the three-day Fashion Show Festival. It’s bigger than Fashion Week and we get to walk for very cool international brands. The coordination team is so nervous it seems they had fifteen double espressos just before the event. They are screaming and yelling around like geese on migration. “_ Cuack cuack cuack cuaaaaaaack!”

Even when I am on a chair, having my makeup done, they come one by one to scream in my ears:

“Agataaaaaaa faster! Faster!! You have to go to hair!”
“Hum… Dude… I cannot do any faster! Talk to my makeup artist!”

We run here and there with Alice and we send each other whatsapp messages, even if we are three seats away from one another. I am having a lot of fun even though I would definitely trade the hairstyling for a nap! I fall asleep twice at makeup and when the hairstylist shows me the chair I am supposed to seat on, I don’t really get the distance, seat twenty inches on the right and fall on the floor. Yes, I am not tired; I am completely exhausted. I don’t remember having felt like this in my life, but the adrenalin helps me to struggle with the sleep. I love my job and I really love when I am busy. I don’t complain because I never slept so deeply in my life since I am in Chile. I created myself a life equation I always have to respect in order to feel well:

Intense workout + meditation + intense work life + good food + love = Total happiness.

I am ecstatic to find myself in the life I wanted to have when I started modeling. I never thought I would make it this far and I am actually proud of myself.