A deceptive gloss

You've got "the look"! Then{hellip} look out! Could anything be more flattering than this? Someone approaches you at the mall suddenly and says, "Wow! You could become a model. You've got the `look' we're after. Here, take my card. Give me a call and we can do the needful for you."

People have always said you're good-looking. There has been a flood of compliments wherever you have gone — parties, get- togethers ... You share this great news with your friends who demand a treat from you in a star hotel.

You also think that after all, money is going to pour in; it is just a question of time. The occasion calls for a real celebration. Now, visions of glamour, world travel and money flash before your eyes.

You are immediately transported to a different world — the world of glamour.

But, come back to the real, mundane world.

It is true that some successful models have been discovered in everyday places such as malls, boutiques, clubs and airports.

But this is rare and is not the case with a vast majority of would-be models. For them, it is an interminable round of knocking at the doors of every agency, till luck smiles on them. Usually one gets caught in what is an elaborate trap.

If and when you make that follow-up appointment, you'll probably find yourself in an office that could be more appropriately called a dungeon, filled with lots of other models and `actor hopefuls.' Then the spiel starts.

What you originally imagined as a professional agency, turns out to be a mere job interview, a high-pressure sales pitch for modelling or acting classes, or for "screen tests' or `photo shoots' — for which a heavy price is charged.

Man, woman or child — it makes no difference to bogus model and talent scouts. Often, they are after one thing — your money — and will say just about anything in the world to lure you to get it. They make tall claims about launching you into immediate fame. But, what they say is hardly what they mean.

Caught in the maze, even the older generation among the middle class families loses its level-headedness and fan their children's craze by allowing them to spend all their time in the beauty parlours instead of channelling their attributes in the right direction. Also, since the advent of satellite communication, the influx of small screen serials is on the rise.

This is a different game altogether, where your ordinary and homely looks would suffice to carry you through and earn you the type of popularity you have been aspiring for.

In no time, you become the heartthrob of millions of viewers. And what media publicity! And every now and then, an ad in the newspaper for new faces. What a golden era we live in!

It is sometimes disheartening to observe that the younger generation, with immense potential for achieving success, dissipates all its energy trying to become models and small screen heroines and lack the drive to move towards constructive fields.

With their youthful vitality, beauty and brains, they have the capacity to embrace the challenges of globalisation with a career of fulfillment.

The millennium prediction is that a large number of women will start innovative businesses during this period and not "make a go of it."

Let us hope that Tamil Nadu is adequately represented in this venture. The older generation has a definite role to play by putting values back into their offspring's life and nurturing their vision of a fulfilling career which will not turn out be a nightmare.

PADMAVATHI SRINIVASAN

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