Life as a Male Model Sucks (And Not in the Good Way)

As Fashion Week here in NYC comes to a close for another season, the pretty boys who walked the runways can all go back to waiting tables at the Coffee Shop or walk about SoHo hoping someone will notice them.

NY Magazine spent some time with a few of them, struggling to make it. The general conclusion: male modeling is not all that appealing, after all.

Financially speaking, male modeling is not unlike being a straight-male porn star: The men have always made less than the women, and very few become big names. For most magazine work, models are paid less than $250. Twenty percent of that goes to the agency, which also bills models for their board and expenses. 'Sometimes you get charged for things you never thought of,' says Petey, 'like $30 a month to be on the website.' The only hope of making ends meet is to book an ad campaign or catalogue job. But even those are less lucrative than they once were. 'Where you used to get $5K for a job, it’s now $2K,' says JD Ferguson, a former model who now works as a fashion photographer. 'I remember my booker saying to me, ‘Hey, if you won’t do $2,000, there’s another guy right behind you that will.’ "

Sounds a lot like life at Bad Boy Records.

Plus, the models pay up to $1200 a month for a bed in a shared apartment. May of the shows they walked this week doesn't pay cash. Rag & Bone, for instance, gave them $1,000 gift card and Duckie Brown gave them a sweater and a pair of sneakers!


And, apparently, there are no gay models. Riiiiggghhhht.
One photographer says: “Gay models will go down in history as the biggest misconception about the male modeling world."

He must be a very blind or very unattractive photographer.

...being straight doesn’t seem to make any difference backstage, where the female models are avoiding the male models like at recess in elementary school. The women are preened over by stylists, surrounded by fashion reporters, while the guys just hang around and smoke. Maybe it’s the discrepancy in income and age—the girls all seem to be highly paid 15-year-olds.

Ah, well. Maybe you'll find something else to do come age 25 when the jobs no longer come in.