Why are runway models mad at Kendall Jenner?

Shelbi Byrnes, 20, is not going to New York Fashion Week in an Escalade lined with bodyguards. The 5 foot 9 inch stride is not guaranteed to have a place in the shows, even those for which it was launched and adapted earlier that same week. It might not even be paid.

"People really like Fashion Week, as if it's a magical thing," Byrnes told The Post. But in reality? "This is a difficult work. It's a real headache. She participated in 10 castings a day before Fashion Week, which began Wednesday, and will continue to do so in the days to come.

Byrnes belongs to the category of what Kendall Jenner – the highest paid model in the world – recently nicknamed "these girls". As in: "I've never been one of those girls who would do 30 shows a season these girls," Jenner told LOVE magazine last month.

Although Jenner later stated that his comments had been taken out of context, they tweeted, "The goal was to be completely free," community members of the fashion shows did not fact.

"These girls earn exponentially less for the same job as you. . . [and they] must be ON TIME, "wrote supermodel Teddy Quinlivan on Jenner's Instagram.

Model Peyton Knight, who ate gherkins instead of meals at her first Fashion Week in 2015, told The Post that she felt "triggered" by Jenner's quote. "She hijacked girls who are not famous and were not born into wealthy families," she says. "[It’s like] their work is nothing, as it is not difficult to do.

While Jenner, who has 94.9 million subscribers on Instagram and 22 million in 2017, spends fashion week in posh hotels and poses behind the scenes with the likes of Alexander Wang. Runway hopes often run for little or no money, end up in expensive and crowded flats and are under pressure to stay thin at all costs – including starvation, purging and drugs.

While industry insiders claim that highly sought-after models, such as Jenner, can sell hundreds of thousands of times, lesser-known models are often paid in merchandise or in the store, if they are paid.

'[Kendall] were girls who are not famous and were not born into wealthy families

"The word everyone likes to use is" exposure ". They will say, "I will not pay you, but it's a good show," says Rachael Pope, 18, who recently signed with the ANTHM modeling agency and took part in smaller ones. exhibitions in New York, tells The Post.

According to Knight's experience, NYFW pays a lot "in the trade". This is partly why she spent her days eating pickles. "How many scholarships does a woman need? I have two shoulders, I do not need five wallets, "says the model, who has since shot more lucrative print ads for Hermes and Alexander Wang.

What this amounts to saying to the model Byrnes, is that "you do not earn much money at Fashion Week unless you are famous". Paris Al-Atraqchi, 19, participated in five parades and "has not been paid a dime".

Worse still, the dummies find themselves "going into debt" with their agencies when "the work does not come right away," says Knight. Often, models traveling from other states or countries will stay in "model homes" owned by the agency: two- or three-bedroom apartments that can accommodate up to six girls in each room. Byrnes, a native of Las Vegas, stayed in New York in June 2015 at the age of 17. Her rent, she says, "is around $ 3,000 a month … for a bunk bed." two other models.

Even more crazy than the cost of housing is the culture inside of them. Although agencies, which tend to own a few apartments in every city of fashion week, hire "stay-at-home moms" to make sure the space is livable and to maintain models, they can not or want to not control.

For example, drug use – a major problem in general for young role models – can be seen in homes with high peer pressure. "I was extremely vulnerable to the behaviors of others," says Knight, pondering his first season in a model apartment in New York. "I was lucky to avoid the party scene."

Byrnes remembers personally the drug use among women that she knew of model apartments. "Many of them make cocaine as if it were water," she says. "It was crazy, I think that's why so many girls are so meager.

Another factor beyond the control of the mother-house: dangerous diet strategies. The pressure to stay slim is already crazy during Fashion Week, and Knight remembers that it was even worse in the sample apartment. "I felt like I could not eat normally" around other women, she says. "They were talking about food and diets all the time, and it really feels, I've lost so much that I was too skinny for some designers."

And the pressure does not come only from peers: Al-Atraqchi remembers that when a friend's agent discovered that she was "allergic to some kind of fish", [the] The agent told her to eat it for her to vomit and lose weight.

Industry leaders are not deaf to industry complaints, which have become stronger in light of the #MeToo movement. In August, Vogue announced that the editorial pages of models under 18 years would no longer be broadcast and the CFDA, unofficial sponsor of Fashion Week, expressed its support for the minimum age required.

Sara Ziff, who runs Model Alliance, a non-profit organization defending labor rights models, thinks it's "great" to see a move into the rights campaign of the models – but that's not enough . Unless the standards are more seriously defined and applied, "we know that these standards are not really standard – they are more focused on aspiration," she told The Post.

Al-Atraqchi, who waited 14 hours behind the scenes before attending an unpaid parade last week, has little hope for change this year. "I'm going to work all the time, and I'm not going to do a quarter of what I could do [the rest of the year doing modeling work], "she says." I just want to go to LA and say, "Screw