Nymphaea
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The Edit by Net-A-Porter
February 23, 2017
The Model's March
Model Cameron Russell
Photographer Victor Demarchelier
Styling Alison Edmond
February 23, 2017
The Model's March
Model Cameron Russell
Photographer Victor Demarchelier
Styling Alison Edmond
net-a-porterCameron Russell has been speaking up about issues her entire modeling career. From a Ted Talk about the challenges of her industry to protesting climate change with Vogue, this is a woman with issues – and the influence to do something about them. She explains her path to protest and why we should join her.
Model Cameron Russell has been busy of late. Not posing up a storm on set, but posting up a storm on social media (@cameronrussell), as she uses her fame to encourage our involvement in politics, feminism and human rights. While the past few months have seen a mass activism of previously apathetic generations, 29-year-old Russell has long been a questioner and a provoker. Here, she explains her motivation, the issues she struggles with, and why #BlackLivesMatter was the most important message to come out of the Women’s March.
“I grew up really political. I even told everybody I wanted to be president. My parents made a great middle-class income doing jobs they enjoyed, so I grew up believing the system was working. It seemed like a meritocracy but, of course, it wasn’t like that. When I became a model, I found myself in exclusive rooms with billionaires and senators without doing anything to earn it. It’s this totally wacky, superficial thing.”
“As I got close to finishing my political science major, I started to think, ‘I’m being miseducated. They’re teaching me about rich people and presidents, but [not] about real progress that moves us forward and protects vulnerable people.’ With that realization, I started to see all these missing bits, such as when I was in Maine with my parents and I walked by the house where Frances Perkins – the first female cabinet member and Us Secretary of Labor – lived. [I studied] political history and I’d never learned about her. I’d never even heard her name.”
“When I started modeling [aged 16] and I saw a model on a magazine, I would think, ‘[If] I was on that cover, I would say, ‘End all wars of aggression!’ and that would be transformative. But then you get there and you realize that’s not how change works. I mean, you do have some kind of access, but the reality is, you can’t make change if you don’t bring people with you.”
“Activism is not exclusive. Giving the Ted Talk [about her experiences in the modeling industry] gave me a public identity closer to my personal identity, and so a lot of like-minded people and cool feminist media activists reached out to me. It gave me the confidence to own more of that identity because I realized, ‘Oh, those two things – model and activist – can go together.’”
“I’ve been on shoots Where the photographer is really famous and the magazine is important, and they’re taking a shot and I think, ‘I don’t want that shot; I don’t want to create an image of a woman being sexualized in that way. I don’t think it’s crucial.’ But can I articulate why that is? Because, really, that’s my whole job: to be the character in someone’s fantasy. When I agree to show up [to a shoot], that’s what I’m agreeing to. So if I’m not walking away, how am I negotiating that moment? It’s very hard. I’ve spoken up and lost jobs, but it’s a calculated risk because I’m at a place in my career when I can say no and it doesn’t make a big difference. I fear that sometimes I speak up because I’m the most powerful person in the room and there are no repercussions. And it scares me that in instances when I’m not, I don’t speak up. Because what does that say for [the people] who aren’t the most powerful in a room? I think they are much better humans than I am, so I’m trying to learn to speak up no matter how powerful or powerless I am.”
“Role model or role to play? A lot of young people are saying, ‘I follow you on Instagram, you’re getting me into activism, you’re getting me into politics,’ and that’s great, I want to be a role model in that way and I’m privileged to have that voice, so let me use it as responsibly as I can. But another part of me is thinking, ‘[I really] shouldn’t be on this cover, we need to see other people.’ I’m in a shift, moving from political to activist and I don’t know where I’m going to land.”
“I’m proud of the model community that’s emerging. I think that we make really spectacular activists. Once you learn that something like only 20% of op-eds are written by women, and that roughly 80% of talk-show guests are men, or that 30% of creative directors are women, you realize that women are really excluded in media. But in social media they are not excluded, because models are major operators on those platforms. When you start to think about the social-media environment as being a media creator, you realize that you are a woman in media, you’re not ‘just’ a model. We are not clothes hangers.”
“Models can normalize activism, especially for young women. How many times have you heard a young woman say, ‘I’m just not that political’? Actually, all of us are political, it’s really just a question of whether you want to be aware of the impact of decisions or not. And I think there is something to be said for [mixing] a little bit of that with modeling. Life isn’t one-dimensional.”
“The women’s march was complicated for me. We do need to talk about sexism and women and gender inequality. But as a white woman, I don’t know that I feel comfortable in this moment asking men of color to march with me, or Muslims to march with me, or women of color to come in and build a better march. I feel like I [should be] marching with them. Ultimately though, I went because showing up, making compromises, that’s the work we need to do. White women need to be present alongside and in solidarity with the people who are most vulnerable. It’s about showing up for each other.”
“Listen as well as speak. One thing I’ve been doing is listening to the podcasts Democracy Now! and The Sojourner Truth. At times, you stop reading other things, but it’s useful to have another source, another perspective. So I download these and listen to them on the train. Painless.”
“Start Small. In terms of reading, for people into fashion, I recommend a book called A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, about Antigua and tourism and inflation. It’s one of the most powerful pieces of creative non-fiction I’ve ever read and it’s a great entry point. If you haven’t read anything by Audre Lorde, go read Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It’s a book that I give to lots of young women who are becoming activists and thinking about the world in a different way. It’s the book I wish I had read in high school because it was one of the first books that made me realize, ‘Oh, there’s this whole other world going on.’”
“I think that most people want to be good people. Maybe what’s missing are the tools for how to do that.”
For more information on how to get involved, visit cameron-russell.com
