Body parts

[Ghazala_Nasir]

Way back in the ’90s when the modelling industry was just about taking off and people like Malaika Arora had just about been discovered and practically every young person in the city wanted to be a model, one of the most successful pick-up lines ever was: “You have beautiful eyes / hands / legs / some portion of the anatomy beyond the obvious, can we discuss a modelling assignment?”

When someone said that to me at a pub in Bombay, referring to my “cute feet”, all I could do was sigh. Men! What lengths won’t they go to when they try and pick up women! So I wasn’t at my nicest when I gave him the brush-off, and when he persisted I threatened actual bodily harm.

Now, after speaking to models and model coordinators, film production people, photographers and advertising executives, I think, “Dammit, if I’d bothered to listen to that man for five minutes, for all I know I could be earning 12 to 15K every now and then, posing for ads that only required my feet.”

Because now I have discovered the existence of ‘parts’ models. People featured in advertisements whose faces you may or may not see. They may or may not be professional models; they may be regular, everyday people with only average looks, they may be short or totally unglamorous. But they possess at least one anatomical feature that’s drop-dead gorgeous, which you’ve definitely seen in advertisements: well-maintained long-fingered hands, for instance; a magnificent mane of jet-black, thick, lustrous hair; clear eyes that speak volumes; a sensual mouth and a brilliant smile; an exquisite curve of neck and shoulder; a tummy that’s like an ironing board; a strong, square jaw; smooth, flawless skin; long, lovely legs; pretty, delicately-arched feet; a smooth, nicely-arched back.

The inside story
You’ve seen these anatomical features all over the place, unassociated with faces. Think of ads for hair removers and shaving creams, shampoo and hair care ads, skincare and personal hygiene campaigns, toothpaste and cosmetics commercials, jewellery catalogues and clothing ads. Body parts, body parts, all over the place.

But you haven’t the faintest idea that these body parts often don’t belong to the people you know are models or actors, that famous faces sometimes make use of body doubles when the faces are not in focus, that there are people you’ve never heard about but often seen in the advertisements you read or see.

“There are so many reasons why parts models are necessary,” says Vishal Kharat of the Mumbai-based production house Opticus Films. “Sometimes the model is good-looking, but his or her body structure doesn’t quite suit the shots we need to take, so we make use of a body double. Or perhaps the budget for the film can’t accommodate the model or celebrity’s fee for all the while it takes to shoot, so we shoot the main model only for the scenes you’ll see of his or her face, and use a body double for the rest. And then there are ads which only focus on certain portions of the body, not the face at all, so it makes more sense to go for someone who has that perfect feature rather than a famous model.”

This isn’t a new phenomenon by any means – it’s existed for years, but only people within the circles of advertising know about it. Even wannabe models who rush about getting portfolios shot haven’t a clue. And how could they, since all the media talks about are ramp models with long, lithe bodies? Who, outside the industry, really gives a damn about parts models with long, lithe fingers?

“Newcomers really wouldn’t know about this side of the business,” muses Vishal Kharat. “Only when they have been in the industry for a while will they realise that there are also jobs like this to be done.”

Body of evidence
All we see of advertising from the outside is the glamour and the creativity (and sometimes the lack of the latter). As readers and viewers, we tend to take it for granted – naturally the things and concepts we see in them are going to be as perfect as possible because they’re trying to make us buy those things and concepts. Simple and clear-cut. What goes on behind the scenes is just a job they do that has little to do with us, like our jobs mean nothing to them.

So it doesn’t occur to us to wonder where all these perfect hands and feet and six-pack abs came from. If we thought about it at all, we’d probably assume these are stock pictures of models we already know of, or the result of someone’s hard work on Photoshop. But no, that’s not the case at all. Behind the hands and feet and six-pack abs are their owners, some of whom are known to the industry almost specifically for their fabulous body parts.

For instance, you’ve seen Geetanjali Roy practically everywhere – or have you? You’ve definitely seen her hair billow and swirl in Pantene ads for Proctor and Gamble, and also in Sunsilk ads for HLL. Not to mention Vatika and Parachute. She’s been doing ads like this ever since she started off as a model about eight years ago, and she got her break thanks to her long, lustrous, jet-black hair.

[Ghazala_Nasir]

“My neighbour had always commented on how lovely my hair was, and she introduced me to Anita Israni, a model coordinator,” says Mumbai-based Geetanjali. “A week later, Anita called me for a haircare advertisement and I’ve been doing those ever since.”

Geetanjali does do advertisements other than those for hair care – you’ve also seen her in ads for Garnet Plywood and Mother’s pickle, which she’s very proud of – but by and large she does haircare ads. And since her hair is primarily her claim to fame, she takes very good care of it. “I’m lucky that it’s naturally beautiful, but I can’t cut it short or colour it,” she says. “So sometimes I do get a bit bored of it the way it is, in fact, I recently cut it just a little bit shorter.”

She’s been lucky – almost all the ads she’s worked on have shown her face as well her hair – but she does recall a couple of ads in which all she provided was the hair. The face belonged to someone else. “That didn’t feel very good,” she confesses, “But you can’t help that – it’s a job and I did it. I’m lucky to have the kind of hair I have, in fact, I’d tell all modelling newcomers to focus on their best feature when they’re shooting portfolios, and understand what the industry needs. The demand for perfect anatomical features is huge, so if you have them, make the most of them.”

Bodywork
Geetanjali gives good advice. In Mumbai, model coordinator Anita Israni of Israni Communications, has a data bank of models with exceptional body parts. “There are so many people on my list who are known specifically for certain portions of their bodies,” says Anita, “And the money they earn is not at all bad. If they’re completely fresh, they could earn maybe Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 per eight-hour shoot, but once they’re better known, that could average out at Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 and even go up to Rs 15,000. That of course depends on the budget for the shoot, but well-known models like Shilpa Kataria, who focuses solely on hand shoots these days, can ask for and get that much.”

Jobs are available in plenty, and they don’t come only from advertising industry: you could find yourself on television for instance, doing a good imitation of Hema Malini’s hands in the opening credits of the serial Damini, where all you see is a pair of hands doing an arti. “Hema Malini probably didn’t have the time to do that portion of the shoot,” says Anita, “So a body double was required. And in any case, for tight, finicky shots like that, a professional is a better option.”

Israni’s right, it’s professionalism that’s important – not everyone who has perfect anatomical features can pull off a shoot. Like everything else, practice makes perfect. Photographer Akaash Das recalls a shoot that had to be dropped because the model, who only had to hold a cup of tea, couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. Even after umpteen retakes, the pictures couldn’t be used. And hand model Shilpa Kataria, who quit fulltime modelling four years ago when she was pregnant and has done more than 200 hand shoots since (“More than that, in fact I’ve lost count”), believes that she’s the darling of the industry because she knows exactly what to do. “Hand shots can be very confining and dicey because they’re such tight shots,” she says. “Everything has to be done within a tight frame, so the angles are important, and your hand can’t shake for a second.”

Facing the facts
It doesn’t matter to Shilpa that no one knows she’s the person whose hand they’ve seen in advertisements they’ve noticed. It’s a series of jobs she does and that’s all there is to it. It earns her some money and it keeps her in touch with the industry she quit when her daughter was born; she has the best of both worlds now – motherhood and modelling – so she has no great need for recognition.

But it is a fact that most models, once they gain recognition in the great wide world outside the industry, prefer to keep away from parts modelling – or charge clients a bomb if certain features are exceptional. There are thousands of ad campaigns that could grab attention if they featured Aishwarya Rai’s gorgeous green eyes, for instance, but everyone knows that would require a budget the size of a small South American nation – there’s no doubt at all that the eye donation campaign a few years ago caught everyone’s imagination because Aishwarya endorsed it. But Ash is in a different category altogether. Other celebs of today probably did a lot of body doubling on their way to the top. Actor Sanjay Suri, for instance, did a hand shoot for Sony TV when he was a model in Delhi, according to Tony Bhatia of the model coordination and production agency Laxya. But it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see Sanjay’s hands, however nice they are, unattached to his face and body in the future.

“The money isn’t really very good, that’s why there aren’t many people who think of parts modeling,” says Delhi-based Tony Bhatia. “But then the demand is huge. It always was, but now it’s bigger, and I’m thinking of creating a separate data bank soon of parts models, with portfolios featuring only the relevant parts.”

There are modelling agencies abroad that do exclusively that – create data banks of people with perfect body parts who can model for advertisements, catalogues and editorial shoots, complete with specially-shot portfolios focused on those parts of the anatomy – but there are none so far in India. Parts models here tend to be found from among existing models and the thousands of wannabes who besiege modelling agencies with their portfolios. When a model coordinator is asked to provide a parts model, he or she goes through the portfolios available to them, selects about 15 models they think may do, and sends them off for a meeting with the production people or the photographer.

“It can take ages to find what you need,” says Akaash Das. “And body shoots are the worst – people are very unwilling to do them, so I often have to use foreign models for those shoots. And you have to personally check out hands and legs and feet because you don’t see those in portfolio pictures.”

That’s why the search for parts models often continues outside the modelling agencies. And that’s why it makes sense to not assume that the ‘such beautiful eyes – want to be a model?’ conversation opener is just a pick-up line. If you check it out properly, you may just land yourself a modelling assignment. Whether you think you’re model material or not.

[dutch_paki]

interesting thread