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Glamour Girls is an 8-part TV documentary series recently produced by the BBC. The program showed behind the scenes at Samantha Bond's Model Agency.
Glamour Girls was essential viewing for potential Page 3 girls, showing many things that girls need to do, and just as important, a few things for girls to avoid, if they want to be successful models. This page contains some screenshots from the series and brief reviews, plus a lot of additional commentary of our own, about many of the subjects covered. |
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All the programs in the series began with the same introduction (narrated by Claudia Winkleman).
She said that in a recent survey of teenage girls, two-thirds regarded modelling as their "dream job". |
Comment - Why Girls Want to ModelWhy is modelling so popular? Shouldn't girls have ambitions to be nurses, or perhaps, even, to win The Apprentice?Different girls appear to want to model for apparently different reasons. Some girls see modelling as a short, or medium-term, career. Only a very small number of girls have managed to make very large fortunes from modelling. Far more commonly, the attraction of "becoming a model", even in only a modest way, is that it provides opportunities for girls to meet men that the girls wouldn't otherwise come into contact with, typically - highly-paid footballers, pop singers, rich businessmen, or even a wider range of ordinary blokes, outside their normal circles. All girls enjoy the act of doing modelling. They also like the lasting results: to possess, and show off, the resulting photos, either to keep for their private use, or to show friends, or to a wider audience on the Internet, or through the medium of newspapers or lads magazines. The act of modelling gives girls confidence and self-esteem. In "Glamour Girls" we saw new girl Amy Diamond, after her first commercial photoshoot, quite thrilled to have done it, and saying how it has given her a "confidence boost" and an "ego boost", and how "every girl should have a glamour shoot". Amy is a naturally attractive girl. But affirming self-confidence and body-image is even more important to girls who might consider themselves to be either very slim, or overweight. There have been several programs along the lines of "How to Look Good Naked", and "Coleens Real Women", which demonstrate how all real girls can benefit. All of these different reasons for wanting to model have the same basic influence behind them - the desire of all girls to be physically attractive. What is actually making all girls want to model, in some way or other, is their hormones. |
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Katie and Rhian - Signing Autographs"Glamour Girls" showed Page 3 girls Katie Downes and Rhian Sugden attending a show (Autographica) where guys could pay to have a photo personally signed by the girls.Katie and Rhian each received a £500 fee for attending the event. The girls also charged £10 for each autograph. Visitors could also pay to have a photo taken with either of the girls. |
The Numbers - What Models Get PaidDuring the course of the series, a lot of figures were given about how much Page 3 girls can earn, and some of their costs. Here are some of the numbers that were quoted during this series (and in the press and some other recent TV programs):
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"Glamour Girls" said that the Samantha Bond agency gets about 500 queries from girls each month. Occasionally they hold open casting weeks, where they invite girls along, to see them, and see if they might be suitable to join the agency.
In the week being shown in the program, they didn't manage to find a single suitable girl among the applicants. The main problem with most of the girls who had applied was they had had boob implants. To become a Page 3 girl, girls must have natural boobs. The newspapers, and most of their readers, simply do not want to see girls with fake boobs. The number of girls who were unsuitable, because of reasons like this, seemed to make Samantha Bond despair. |
Comment - Boob Jobs and JordanThe issue about boob implants is something that has also been very apparent to us, with girls who write in to us enquiring about our own PhotoShoots.Many girls seem to be under the impression that Jordan (and also girls like Danielle Lloyd) had boob implants, and that it was their exaggerated boobs that enabled them to become well-known models. That is NOT TRUE. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding among girls, particularly about Jordan's career, with the result that many girls are subjecting themselves to ridiculous, unnecessary, and expensive surgery.
Jordan started appearing in The Sun in September 1996. She appeared on Page 3 more than 30 times, over the following two years. For the entire time that Jordan was a Page 3 girl, she had very small boobs (see photo at right). Her popularity as a Page 3 girl was not based on having big boobs. Her boobs were quite small! In August 1997, at the mid-point of her Page 3 career, Jordan had an affair with a high-profile footballer. She was all over the tabloids because of that. That affair certainly helped to make her very well known, and sought after by the tabloids. One lesson that can be drawn from Jordan's career in modelling is that small-busted girls can become very popular (sufficiently so to snare the Manchester United footballer in question), and also successful on Page 3. A year after the footballer incident, in July 1998, Jordan wrote an article in The Star explaining how she felt about being flat-chested, which was headlined "Why I have never had a boob job". Sometime after that, she decided to have her first boob job. The Sun made a great fuss about this, and had a readers' poll - "should she/shoudn't she?". The readers said that she should not, because most readers, apparently, don't like fake boobs. But Jordan went ahead and did it. And because of The Sun's policy of not having girls with fake boobs on Page 3, Jordan never appeared on Page 3 again. It was the end of her Page 3 career. After her boob job Jordan seemed to be embarrassed about showing her very large boobs. It was a long time before she resumed topless modelling. She did a topless photoshoot for Front in July 2001 (3 years after her boob job), and also appeared topless (and nude) in Playboy (July 2002), and was again topless in Front Jan 2003 (5 years on). Jordan has done many photoshoots for Playboy. Jordan has a Wikipedia page, and this includes a detailed list of appearances (Wikipedia Jordan). You can see that Jordan appeared in 5 photoshoots for Playboy between 1997 and 1999. These pictures were all done before her boob job, and while she had small boobs. Wikipedia shows that there was then a break of 4 years in her modelling, and she then appeared once more, this time with large boobs. Jordan also made a 1-hour video for Playboy, this was also made before her boob job. The DVD is avaialble at Amazon (Playboy's Jordan DVD). One of the customer reviews on Amazon says: "This is not the thing to buy if you are expecting to see Jordan as she is today." The sad story of Jordan's series of boob ops is described here: Jordan's Boob Ops (News of The World).
Danielle LloydDanielle Lloyd is another girl often mentioned by aspiring models. Danielle Lloyd had a career path, which had some similarities with Jordan's.Danielle Lloyd was a beauty contest winner, who had natural boobs, and who was relatively unknown. Then she had an affair with a footballer. That wasn't wrong in itself, but this footballer had been one of the judges in the beauty competition that Danielle Lloyd had won. "Sleeping with the judge" was considered an unfair advantage by the organisers and other contestants, and there was a fuss about it. Interestingly, the footballer/judge involved with Danielle Lloyd was exactly the same footballer that Jordan had had her affair with 5 years previously. Danielle Lloyd also posed for a set of photos for Playboy magazine, which was contrary to the terms of her beauty competition rules. (Full story: The Indepdendent). These two misdemeanours came to light at about the same time. So Danielle Lloyd was all over the tabloids for a short period, and became very well known. As interest in her declined, she also embarked on a series of boob implants, which helped, to some extent, to keep her in the public eye. The important career advice for potential models is: having boob implants will NOT make you into a famous model (though having an affair with a Premier League footballer might!)
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Although none of the applicants seen during Samantha Bond's open casting week had been considered suitable, the program did show one success.
The program followed the first steps of new girl Amy Diamond, who has become a successful model on Samantha Bond's books. We learnt how Amy had been spotted on a tube train, and saw her first test PhotoShoot, and saw her doing her first commercial job.
Amy was initially spotted, on a tube train, by one of the agency's staff, and invited to go along for an interview. |
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We then saw Amy having her hair restyled, under the guidance of the agency, to a more natural colour and cut.
It's very important for girls to have good natural boobs. Girls also need to look after their hair, and not to bleach it (and to look after their finger-nails). The importance of having good hair was also made clear in a recent episode of Coleen's Real Women. Coleen was trying to find girls to model hair products. The manufacturer was very particular about requiring girls with good unbleached natural hair. |
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We then saw new model Amy having her first "test photoshoot".
Amy wasn't paying anything to get the photos taken, and wasn't being paid anything for them either. Amy was simply taking the opportunity to get some experience, and to get some pictures to start off her portfolio. |
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Finally we saw Amy doing her first paid commercial PhotoShoot, for Nuts magazine.
At the end of the PhotoShoot Amy said a few words to camera about how she had enjoyed it, and the feeling of self-confidence it had given her, and how every girl should do a PhotoShoot. |
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And this is Amy, as she appeared in Nuts, 18th April issue.
Amy also entered The Sun's Page 3 Idol competition, and got into the Final 6 girls. There's a very brief clip of Amy, taking part in Page 3 Idol, on The Sun's channel on YouTube, here: Page 3 Idol Final 6 (YouTube). |
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There's some useful advice about building a portfolio on our main page, here: Building a Portfolio.
In "Glamour Girls" we saw new model Amy having her first "test photoshoot". Amy wasn't paying anything to get the photos taken, and wasn't being paid anything for them either. Amy was simply taking the opportunity to get some experience, and to get some pictures to start off her portfolio. |
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"Glamour Girls" also showed Anna Taverner. Anna used to be a really nice model (her first photoshoot for Page 3 of The Sun is featured in one of the Page 3 Modelling Videos on our main page).
Anna then disappeared from Page 3, and in "Glamour Girls" we learnt that her personal life has had some ups and down, and she wanted to return to modelling.
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Anna needed to get some up to date images for her book. Most of the photos in her existing portfolio were rather cheesey, and she need to get some "more natural" images.
We also saw some digital retouching being performed on Anna's images. We saw her complexion being smooothed, and the perspective of the shot being altered to make her legs appear slimmer and longer. |
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Just after the pictures had been taken Anna said "I'm really looking forward to walking into Samantha Bond's and whacking down a load of pictures."
Anna had apparently paid a photographer £1,000 to get just 6 photos, some of which had been heavily retouched. You can see the final 6 photos in the upper screenshot (shown left). Anna "really liked" 2 of the images (including the leggy shot shown in the lower image), and "really hated" another one (a portrait, at the extreme left in the upper row). Effectively, Anna had paid £500 each, for 2 photos. And even after all that, no-one seemed blown away by any of the images. Getting really good pictures isn't easy, even when professional models pay a fortune to try to do so. |
Comment - Digital Manipulation of ImagesDigital manipulation can be a speciality in itself. Image enhancement and manipulation is nothing new. In the days of black and white photography some photographers took the the art of manipulating images in the darkroom to great lengths. Even in recent times, photographers like Bob Carlos Clarke made their names through traditional darkroom manipulation of black and white film.One of the most impressive examples of digital retouching that we've noticed recently was in the TV program "Dawn Porter Gets Naked". It showed a photo of her going through numerous stages of retouching, including a digital restyling of her hair, and cutting out and repasting whole parts of her face, to create a more symmetrical facial appearance. The final result was almost unrecognisable from the original. We only do a very limited amount of retouching outselves. We don't see anything at all wrong with it. We'd like to do a lot more. But it's time consuming and we just haven't got the time to do it. Retouching more than a few pictures needs patience and becomes very tedious too. We wonder what happens at Playboy. Presumably a lot of work goes into retouching the centrefold spread, and the half dozen images used in the monthly printed issue. But what about the dozens of photosets produced every week for Cyber Club, with up to 50 images in each - are all those, literally thousands of images, all retouched? A recent photset of Nikkala Stott on Body-in-Mind had 140 photos in it. Is it practical to retouch that number of images? One consequence of retouching is that photographers may require girls who don't need a lot of work doing to them. If anyone books Anna, based on her appearance in her "new" book, they might be wanting their money back, and asking for Nikkala Stott instead. More: Celebrity Retouching (Times). |
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Jenna"Glamour Girls" showed Jenna, one of Samantha Bond's models, getting ready for a Page 3 photo shoot.We learned that Jenna was paid £180 for each Page 3 photo shoot. She seemed to be doing around 1 per month. But her living expenses were a lot more than that. |
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Kitty Lea"Glamour Girls" also showed another of Samantha Bond's models, Daily Star Page 3 girl, Kitty Lea. Kitty said that she had had no academic qualifications, and had been working in a pub, when she decided to try to get on Page 3. She had earned £30,000 in her first year on Page 3. Kitty seemed to be doing quite well, but it seemed that she really wanted to be doing something else - acting, she said. |
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Sun Page 3 PhotoShoot in Tenerife"Glamour Girls" showed a Page 3 photoshoot involving two of Samantha Bond's girls - Rhian Sugden (shown left) and Katie Downes. This was one of the more interesting Page 3 photoshoots in that it was taken on location in Tenerife.The photographer for this photoshoot was Alison Webster. Alison Webster takes some of the Page 3 pictures for The Sun. More importanly she is involved with the other major Page 3 Girls' agency, "Girl". "Girl" handles the large majority of the current Page 3 girls. |
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We were also very surprised that this location photoshoot took place on a public beach, with a lot of onlookers gawping, and some even trying to take photos of the girls themselves, like the man bending down in this shot. The girls, and Alison, were not too pleased about that.
We take a lot of outdoor pictures ourselves and wouldn't think of doing so in any place with onlookers about. |
Comment - Page 3 Location PhotoShootsFor some 30 years, up until 2003, all of The Sun's Page 3 pictures had been taken by just one photographer - Beverley Goodway. Beverley Goodway worked almost exclusively in his own studio. It was exceptionally rare for a Page 3 picture to be taken outdoors.In 2003 Alan Strutt took over as the Page 3 photograher, for a brief period. Most of Alan Strutt's pictures were also studio based. Although he did begin a trend to using a few outdoor locations. In early 2006, Alison Wesbster took over as Page 3 photographer. She began to use quite a lot of natural indoor settings (rooms), and also began to use more outdoor location shots. Many of these outdoor shoots seem to have been done abroad, in places such as Tenerife, as we saw in the clips of Rhian and Katie in Glamour Girls. Through much of period of January to March 2008, and continuing through the Spring 2008, the large majority of pictures used on Page 3 have been location shots, similar to those obtained in Tenerife. This represents a shift in the style of "Page 3". We believe that pictures taken in outdoor locations always look fresher and more natural and than studio shots. These are the type of pictures that we specialise in on our own website. We do take some studio pictures (when the weather prohibits outdoor pictures), but we always find that the outdoor shots are the best. The very best locations, for Page 3 type pictures, are actually the English countryside, though this has only rarely been used sucessfully on Page 3 (examples: 3 Aug 2004 (1), 3 Aug 2004 (2)). There are many difficulties shooting outdoors in England - the convenience of getting to locations, issues about privacy, and very importantly - the unreliable weather. None of the girls that we use are professional models and so they don't mind too much about being messed about if we continually have to postpone photoshoots, trying to find a decent day. It wouldn't be possible to do that with professional models. There's a shoot of Rhian on Body-in-Mind which says that she had been booked to do the photoshoot outdoors, but that on the day it was wet. What a surprise. A theme we often use in our own photoshoots is "tropical island girl". Here we are actually tying to make Birmingham look like Tenerife. A few of our shots probably look more tropical than much of Tenerife actually does. There is a video of Linda Lusardi doing a calendar shoot in Tenerife, a long time ago - on a banana plantation, and on the black volcanic sand - we might put it up on YouTube, if we get a minute. |
Comment - What Makes a Good Page 3 ModelWhen about thinking "What Makes a Good Page 3 Model" it's very easy to think just about appearance: A girl needs to be good looking facially, and it helps to have a good pair of boobs, which must be natural. Large natural boobs can be a big advantage. Height is unimportant. Some very successful Page 3 girls have been quite short, as short as 5' 2". Girls also must be aged at least 18 (for legal reasons), and at most, in their early 20's.But, much more important than appearance, is "personality". These are things like how the girl presents herself, her attitude and motives - why does she want to be a Page 3 girl. Firstly, the "look" that is required for Page 3 is "natural girl-next-door". It's very important to stress the type of image required. The girl needs to look "fresh" and "natural". They don't want girls who look like Pamela Anderson, or Jordan (after her implants), or girls who look as though they've just walked off a porn set. This is also true of requirements for modelling for the weekly lads mags, Nuts and ZOO. They also require the same natural Page-3/girl-next-door look. There is more about the importance of having a natural girl-next-door look, on our YouTube video about Nuts and ZOO: Nuts and ZOO (YouTube) A girl featured in "Glamour Girls", who did impress us in terms of personality, was black model Mutiat Ademola. She had plenty to say for herself: she believed that it wasn't good enough for girls to try to copy Jordan, but that a girl needed to be different and/or do something original, and she saw a role for herself as a unique black glamour model. "Glamour Girls" showed Mutiat was having some pictures taken with the aim of trying to sell them herself. She was taking a pro-active view that girls shouldn't simply leave the task of getting work to an agency. We don't know how viable any of Mutiat's ideas are - about having a black supermodel, and about her own chances in that role, or about her chances of selling her own photos to lads mags. But she certainy had a lot of personality and get-up-and-go. We saw Mutiat doing a magazine interview about modelling for "Touch" magazine. She said that, firstly, she enjoys it. The best thing was the associated social life - clubbing, etc. She described jobs as being "so much fun". She said the worst thing about modelling was its competitiveness and uncertainty - not knowing where the next job might come from. Identifying "uncertainty" as the worse thing about a job was intelligent. We have a page about Britain's Next Top Model, and that has a section about the Importance of Personality. That page was written 2 years ago, when it was apparent that girls don't win that competition because of thier looks, but because of personality issues. By "personality" we mean all the things about the girl that are not part of her appearance. Loosing and gaining weight isn't as important as knowing why someone wants to be a model.
Britain's Next Top ModelThe episode of Britain's Next Top Model which ran immediately after this episode of Glamour Girls, turned out to be quite an illuminating episode.In the first task in this epsiode of BNTM, the girls were asked, by an interviewer (June Sarpong), to talk about themselves and why they were in the competition. The girls' remarks were then analysed by a pair of canny journalists. One girl, Martha, said that she wasn't particularly interested in fame, but that she loved doing photoshoots and modelling clothes on the catwalk. This was picked up by the journalists, and put in contrast with the comments made by several of the other girls, whose main aim seemed to be to date pop singers and become famous, and for whom becoming a model was seen as a stepping stone towards that. This incident reminded us of an episode of "Colleen's Real Women", which was trying to find a girl to represent the Pasha Nightclub brand. Several professional models were rejected because they didn't know what the brand was. The girl who got the Pasha job was the only one who had said "I love going there". We would always choose the girl who "loves doing it". |
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This is one of the girls who were shown being being turned down by the agency (though the reasons weren't explained).
Someone told us that they believed that one of the girls being seen during these interview sessions, and who was shown being turned down by the agency, was a girl called Sammie Pennington. We think that this might be her. Not long after, Sammie Pennington began to appear in the weekly mags, Nuts and ZOO, and on Page 3 of The Star. We're not certain if the girl shown in this screenshot from the program is Sammie Pennington, or exactly what happened, but it's an interesting story. |
Comment - Girls Who Succeed After Being Turned DownWe're not certain that it was Sammie Pennington who the program showed being turned down. But Sammie Pennington certainly went onto to appear regularly on Page 3 of The Star, and in the weekly lads mags, including the ZOO cover shown right, not long after the program was made. |
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There have been many well known instances where girls have been turned down by various agencies and competitions, and yet have gone on to have very successful careers.
One of the YouTube videos on our main page shows Linda Lusardi talking about her Page 3 career.
Linda Lusardi explains that when she first tried to get on Page 3 she was told that she was "not Sun material". But she didn't give up, and she tried again, and was accepted, and began a Page 3 career which lasted many years. Click here to watch the video: |
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Keeley Hazell originally entered the model search competition run by The Star. She was turned down. A few months later, Keeley then entered The Sun's Page 3 Idol, which she won, and then went on to become the most successful Page 3 girl of recent years.
Michelle Marsh also entered a model search competition run by The Star, and was not successful. About 9 months later she managed to get onto Page 3 of The Sun, and went on to have a very successful career. Judgements made by agencies, and the judging in competitions, are notoriously unreliable. Besides frequently rejecting the best girls, in several cases the girls who have won some of these competitions (in both The Star and The Sun) have come to nothing. Page 3 idol launched Keeely to great success, but the girl who won Page 3 Idol following year virtually vanished. There might be some particular reasons why girls are rejected by an agency. If girls have fake boobs or have appeared in The Sport (see below: The Sport), then that's usually fatal and there's not much that can be done about that. But, in some cases, it can be well worth continuing to try.
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Amanda Harrington"Glamour Girls" showed two of Samantha Bond's models, Page 3 girl Katie Downes, and Amanda Harrington (shown left), out shopping, and having a drink afterwards. Amanda Harrington is a former Miss Liverpool.There was a heated discussion between the two girls on the subjects of topless modelling, and modelling for Playboy. The discussion got quite complicated and confusing. The girls knew that Jordan and Danielle Lloyd had appeared in Playboy, and that lots of money was involved.
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Comment and Opinion - Playboy |
British girls have often been featured in Playboy magazine.
During the 1980's Playboy had a reputation for the best in glamour photography. Over a period of many years (about a decade) Playboy had many very good looking and with large natural boobs, photographed often in gorgeous locations, by the best photographers. However, during the past 10 years the reputation of the magazine has declined. Today, the Gold Standard for glamour models (if not the photography) has become Page 3. The Sun's Page 3 Girls are a cut above Playboy models. There were press reports of Playboy offering Keeley Hazell a six-figure sum for a PhotoShoot, though her management declined. A few years ago Playboy offered Sun Page 3 girl Katie Richmond £250,000, which was considered a fortune at the time. Katie Richmond went to Los Angeles and was given the red carpet treatment, but eventually decided that Playboy was not for her and turned down the opportunity, despite the large amount of cash on offer. There is a lot more about Playboy and British girls modelling for Playboy (no pictures, just comment and explanation), on our separate page: Playboy - Comment and Opinion.
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Was Katie Richmond Right to Turn Down £250,000 from Playboy?Several of the girls appearing in Glamour Girls made it clear that their ultimate ambition would be modelling for Playboy.
It's not easy to find out all about Playboy. There are a couple of books written by girls who have lived inside the Playboy Mansion - "Bunny Tales" by Izabella St James, and "Playground: a Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion" by Jennifer Saginor. Both of these books are currently out of print, though they can still be obtained secondhand through Amazon marketplace: At first the material inside "Playground" is diffcult to believe, but one of the reviews inside explains that it is all true. "Bunny Tales" is the more readable of the two books. Izabella St James' best friend was an English girl living at the Playboy Mansion at the same time (2002-2004) named Emma, who had previously been a Page-3 girl. The book also includes a paragrah about Jordan (Katie Price), who Izabella met at a party at the Mansion. Girls modelling for Playboy certainly seem to find the lifestyle fun, at least for a few years, though these girls invariably find that the life does not fulfill all their needs, and they always move on to other things. |
Katie Hart"Glamour Girls" showed a "new" girl, Katie Hart, who wanted to become a Page 3 model. She was good looking, and apparently has a good figure.However, the agency saw a major difficulty with this girl because pictures of her had already appeared in The Sport. Neither The Star nor The Sun will use girls who have appeared in The Sport. Katie had made a "portfolio" of her pictures from The Sport. All these pictures were considered unusable, and she faced having to pay for some decent photos to be taken, which could cost her £1,000. |
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Louise Glover"Glamour Girls" also showed model Louise Glover. In the program she was very upset that she was no longer getting much modelling work. The agency was doing a good job of trying to provide some emotional support, such as they could. |
Comment - The SportWe don't know all the details of Louise's career, but have noticed her occasionally in the mags we review. When we first saw Louise we thought she was very good looking. But she seemed to make some serious mistakes in her early career. She seemed to do some work for The Sport (or a photographer who supplies material to The Sport). That led to some lurid headlines and reports by The Sport. These things are very often exaggerated, but other photographers and magazine editors inevitably get to find out about these things, and they affect a girl's image. In the program Louise was complaining that FHM didn't want to use her; it's not really surprising. Louise also seemed to have embarked on a series of boob implants, and that also makes girls unsitable for Page 3.
The Sport, unkike The Sun and The Star, is not a family newspaper. The Sport includes a lot of adverts for "adult services". If a girl has been featured in The Sport then the first question that comes to mind is: How did she come to do that? Who suggested it to her? If she wanted to be a Page 3 girl, why didn't she enter Page 3 Idol, or apply to one of the Page 3 agencies? Why on earth did she start with The Sport? Some of the photographers who contribute to The Sport also do work for adult magazines. If they have taken photos of the girl for The Sport, people naturally wonder what else they might have taken. Girls who might like to become Page 3 girls need to be careful, not to have boob jobs, and to avoid any photographers who do work for The Sport.
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Mutiat Ademola"Glamour Girls" showed black model Mutiat Ademola, who said she was trying to become the first famous black glamour model.Samantha Bond said that there is a shortage of ethnic glamour models, and part of the reason is that not that many ethnic girls apply. |
Comment - Black and Asian Models on Page 3This is a question we often get asked oursleves: why are there no coloured girls on our website? The answer's very simple: we don't get any writing in.All of the girls who apply to Page 3 Idol can be seen on Page3.com (while the competition is running). Each year Page 3 idol gets about 600 entrants. We don't know the extact number of coloured girls who applied this year, but just from impressions, we think that there were probably less than half a dozen among the 600. There have been black girls on Page 3. There was a girl called Ione Brown (in the 1980's). And in 2005, very briefly, a girl called Ola Ademola (see: Page 3.com Ola). Ola took part in Miss GB 2007 and came 11th (out of 50). Ola Ademola and Mutiat Ademola are in fact sisters. The number of girls good enough for Page 3 (of any background) is less than one in a couple of hundred. That means that a hundred or so coloured girls would need to apply to produce a good enough sample to get some really good ones. They exist, but coloured girls don't apply in sufficent numbers, for the good ones to be found. Girls like Ola, we suspect, were "token" girls, and not really representative of the best that could be found. The current series of Britain's Next Top Model had one coloured girl in the original 14 girls, and she was dropped in the 2nd week. Coloured girls possibly don't apply because they think they haven't got a chance. Page 3 is certainly very competitive, so most wouldn't be good enough. But if no-one ever applies, none of them will get anywhere. There may be religious or social reasons that make glamour modelling unacceptable to their families. Many Asian and Middle-Eastern girls are particularly attractive by any standards, but we (regretably) rarely see them on Page 3, again social and religious factors may be part of the reason.
Jourdan DunnThere's a good article about the absence of Black and Asian women in fashion modelling here: Jourdan Dunn and The Colour of Money (Times).A few quotes from that article: |
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Finally we saw Samantha Bond and Jeaney Savage having a chat. There was some talk about girls who ruin their figures, and ruin their modelling chances, by having boob jobs. Words such as "mutilating" and "horrendous" were used to describe some boob jobs that they had seen. And they agreed that there isn't a Star on Page 3 at the moment, though everyone would like to find one. To become a Star a girl would need to be special or distinctive in some way. (Much in the way that Keeley was reknowned for her big boobs). |
Comment - The Next Big ThingWinning Page 3 Idol is not enough to make a girl a Star. To become a Star, and a household name, a girl needs something special about her.Keeley Hazell's distinctive asset was her very large boobs. There will always be an opportunity for a good looking girl with large natural boobs to become another big star. After we'd written the original review of last week's program, we noticed an article in the Sunday Times about black model Jourdan Dunn, and added some comments to last week's review (here: Jourdan Dunn). An ethnic model, like Jourdan Dunn, is actually the sort of area where the right person might be able to make a big name for themselves as a Page 3 model. We'd like to see a quality Black or Asian or mixed-race model, with something special about her, become a Page 3 Star. It's always a big advantage for a girl to be the first one to do something, and being the first person to break down a prejudice, of any kind, gives a girl an advantage. In the early days of Page 3 there were a lot of big-busted models on Page 3. But during the 1990's a political prejudice developed against such girls. Michelle Marsh was the first girl to break through that prejudice, and make it acceptable for big-busted girls to appear on Page 3 again. Similarly, today, a girl who could overcome prejudices of race, or prejudices against modelling held by her community, might also be able to make a name for herself. Also, there's still a prejudice against outsize models, in the fashion industry, and on on Page 3. If any of the Bravissimo models, or other outsize girl, could make it onto Page 3, they might also stand a chance of becoming a household name.
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Appearing on Page 3 only last for a few years. Throughout the series, girls had been asked what they wanted to do after that.
Katie Downes and Rhian Sugden (the two Sun Page 3 girls) wanted to carry on working on Page 3 for as long as they could. Louise Glover wanted to get into photography, and Kitty Lea said she wanted to get into acting. Anna Taverner said that she wanted to become an events hostess. However, Anna's story had more to it than that. Anna had originally given up appearing on Page 3, when she found a permanaent boyfriend. She only returned to modelling when that relationship didn't work out. It seems that what Anna was really looking for was a permanent relationship, and modelling was a means to find one. |
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"Glamour Girls" had shown Amanda Harrington, in the US. While she was there
We saw Amanda out clubbing, in Miami. She seemed to have done a great job with her hair and make-up, and was wearing a black dress, very short and showing plenty of cleavage. Amanda seemed to have a lot more enthousiasm for clubbing than she did for doing the photoshoots.
Back in England, we saw Amanda on a date with some poprerty millionaire. Nothing seems to have come of it, but it was obvious where Amanda would like to see her future. |
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We can also arrange private/confidential PhotoShoots. These involve exactly the same type of photos, in the same settings, but the photos remain confidential, and are not put on the website: [Email: simplygorgeous1@hotmail.com] Girls must be aged 18, or over, for all PhotoShoots. |
