By Jessica Frost
@jessicaxfrost

One of the main motives of All My Friends Are Models is to humanize beauty. To take away the stigma that is attached to the fashion industry, specifically models, and to begin to eradicate the stereotypes that can begin to have a detrimental effect.

Models (well, beautiful people in general) get a pretty bad rep for being semi-terrible people. I mean, didn’t we all grow up watching teen movies where the rich, popular and most beautiful girl at school was an A grade bitch? Then there’s all of those movies that depict models as waif and soulless creatures who can’t hold a conversation to save their lives.

It’s a simple and harmless tale that has seemed to ingrain itself into people’s opinions and somehow we’ve all grown up learning to automatically think that beautiful people are selfish, stuck up and boring. Translating this assumption into reality has people thinking of models as un-touchable beings in a league of their own and unapproachable by the average Joe.

Well newsflash people; it ain’t true.

Models don’t think they’re better than you. They don’t look at your love handles, imperfect skin or high-street clothing and think that you aren’t worthy of their time or friendship. Although it may seem like they only hang out with other models, it’s probably because bankers hang out with bankers, people in hospitality hang out with people in hospitality and tradies hang out with tradies. Like attracts like. You spend so much time working with other people in your industry, it’s natural that they become your tight knit circle. It’s not some big conspiracy to exclude ‘normal’ people from this seemingly glamourous, jet-setting life.

It’s also important to think about the incredible amounts of pressure that gets put onto models to exude confidence and perfection at all times. The criticism that comes with the job can easily push someone into their shell and make people feel like they have to be intimidated by this beautiful person who doesn’t seem to have the time of day for anyone else.

With the exception of a few, most models grew up just like you. They went to school and had their parents nag them about doing their homework. They had chores to do and got a casual job at the local supermarket or café. They may be tall, with great skin, cool clothes and an enviable job but there’s a good chance that they’re more intimated by you, a seemingly ‘normal’ person who finds it easy to fit it. It pays to not be so quick to judge.