The impact of the Internet on the modeling industry cannot be overstated. Stars are born online, where they share every moment of their lives on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat before, in an ideal scenario, selling out—for subtle, native advertisers or additional promotion for paid projects—and cashing in. Captive audiences tune in for Chrissy Teigen’s latest snarky tweet and each artfully framed Instagram update from Gigi Hadid, while models like Lucky Blue Smith and Stephen James owe much of their crossover success to loyal social followings. (The thought being something like: if they have more than a million followers, that’s more than a million potential customers!) And the latest platforms provide more than an occasional window into the lives of favored stars: Live-streaming services like Periscope and Meerkat offer a near-constant stream of interaction with celebrities. Taking the unfiltered allure of Snapchat to the next level, both Meerkat and Periscope are designed to showcase life’s minutiae and a real-time perspective on the lives of the beautiful and otherwise unreachable. Offering fans the opportunity to communicate with their idols directly via chat rooms connected to each stream adds another layer to the interactions. The idea is that you’re being presented with reality (albeit a reality under an iPhone glare): there are no prerecorded messages, no 100 shots to get that one ideally filtered ’gram—there is only the moment, in its raw, unaltered, and unfiltered form.
Or so we think. The allure of social media may stem from its presentation of reality, but most high-profile accounts are run by assistants, agents, or strategists who agonize over every last detail, aiming for some mixture of accessible, charming, and aspirational. (Selfies and swimsuit shots don’t hurt, either.) With crash courses in how to curate social feeds becoming part of model training, the days of any true candor on established platforms are over. Even famously forthright models face criticism for social media overshares, and a single 140-character flub online—like bad-mouthing a major client or voicing an unpopular opinion—can result in lost work, unflattering headlines, and a bad reputation.
Streaming provides an alternative to the carefully curated feeds we’ve become accustomed to. Fans can watch models testing out the software itself (often to amusing effect—the learning curve for Periscope’s interface lends itself to users broadcasting their occasional mistakes) or catch an appealing glimpse of personality. High-profile users like Teigen and Tyra Banks are known for their larger-than-life personas and their streams only amplify the effect. Banks’s endearingly off-key renditions of Janet Jackson songs or Teigen’s sneak peeks behind the scenes add to their reputations for being fun, high-energy, and occasionally zany. It actually feels sort of real. But commerce is catching up: Streaming can also serve to promote more than just a cult of personality. In between revealing her favorite Taylor Swift song and most embarrassing moment, Gigi Hadid’s Periscope Q&A name-checked her brand partnership with Maybelline. Victoria’s Secret’s Angels have been amping up excitement for the upcoming fashion show via their streams, while social-savvy agencies like The Society New York have harnessed streaming as a promotional tool. The potential for advertisers and brands seems exponential, but for models looking to build a following, product placement can seem disingenuous and antithetical to the desired image. As much as fans want to see the world through the eyes of stars, they don’t want commercials interrupting the illusion.
Ultimately, streaming—like almost all other forms of social media—is about maintaining an idealized image. Though objectively we know models’ lives aren’t perfect, we still want to see them at their best and most interesting—boring feeds need not apply. When teenage Instagram star Essena O’Neill tearfully announced her social media exit, deriding the time and effort she spent searching for the approval of strangers through Instagram and Vimeo, she was pulling back the curtain on an entire aspect of a boom economy. Even the most off-the-cuff posting becomes part of an overarching narrative connected to a model’s image, making it hard to decipher what’s real and what’s simply good marketing. As girls (and guys) are increasingly encouraged to provide information and content surrounding all aspects of their lives, what was once private is now public—a fact models from the previous generation have had trouble adjusting to. Notoriously terse stars like Kate Moss were once able to maintain an aura of mystery, eschewing press altogether and letting their work speak for itself. Save for a few tech-shy holdouts, those days are over. In the digital age, it’s not about mystery. It’s about money.
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