“It’s kind of hard to explain, but modeling is different from, like, gardening or knitting,” I say, rubbing my arms. “It’s not this skill that you can separate from yourself. It’s you; you’re the product. It’s your appearance that they’re selling. So when you get criticism, it’s always going to be personal, and it’s very often about things you can’t control: They’ll tell you that you’re not tall enough, or you’re not striking enough, or you stand out too much. I mean, I’ve had someone say straight to my face at an audition that I simply wasn’t attractive. Not even, like, a specific feature. Just everything about me.”

I can feel his eyes on me, and I falter. Am I really doing this? Am I really about to tell him the truth, spit out the hot stone of shame that’s been burning inside me this whole time? It’s my last defense against him. Once I say it, I realize, there’ll be no going back. I’ll have trusted him with everything, and it’ll be entirely up to him what he wishes to do with it. He might like me less after I tell him. He might not understand.

But there’s nobody else in the world I can imagine sharing this with. Nobody else I want to confess to, as terrifying as it feels, as high the risk is.

So I take a deep breath, like I’m about to dive headfirst into the ocean, and continue, knowing as I do that it’s really a lost cause now. I might as well be offering him my heart on my palms, holding out hope he’ll be tender with it.

“It’s really twisted, but it’s like, the more worthless they make you feel, the more determined you are to prove your worth to them. I tried to take on all their criticism and change myself. They told me to tone my legs, so I did those stupid diets and threw myself into my workouts. They told me I had to grow my platform, so I made all these social media posts and obsessed over my numbers and wore myself out trying to keep up with the trends. But I still didn’t have that mainstream appeal they were after, and it took me forever to figure out what they actually meant by mainstream.”