What's a former Canadian model like Chelsea Haywood doing talking about "inner light"? Inner what? Isn't that stuff just reserved for dippy Californians who declare themselves yoga gurus after holidaying in India and learning hotel TV yoga?
Former models know about "outer" stuff, you know, like being in hair and makeup sessions for six hours, and stumbling down catwalks in cumbersome clothes they wouldn’t even wear to a Halloween fancy dress party.
Let’s face it. Models are paid to look good. There is no shame in this. We like to look at models that look good, so we can justify paying $200 for a pair of cool Lee Lo-Rider flared jeans (soo kool in fakt, speling flys out the winndow).
True, these days, Haywood is more of a model-turned-hostess-turned-autho r. Four years back, she decided over New York cheesecake in Bangkok with her Australian husband, Matthew Brennan, to work as a hostess and write about the experience.
Now 25, Haywood has a memoir to show for all the craziness, 90 Day Geisha: My Time as a Tokyo Hostess, which is chock-a-block full of compliments from her wealthy and older, male Japanese clients.
“You are so special, ma chérie,” one coos. The others buy her fur coats and designer shoes. One even buys her a laptop computer.
So with everyone telling you you’re beautiful all day, every day, whether modelling or hostessing, wouldn’t it make your head swell like a balloon (albeit a beautiful balloon)?
Not really, Haywood says, because she comes from a small country town in British Columbia. I’m assuming she means the town is so small there is no room for frivolities like nail parlours and halls large enough to host beauty contests. Only essentials like police and fire stations and the town hall.
Haywood’s first job as a model was when she was 19 – a “trunk show” in Singapore.
“It was a Prada show and it was a real introduction, with this $20,000 coat. We did lots of shows like that: Lanvin, DKNY,” she says.
Haywood worked mostly in Australia and Asia with her husband, also a model, doing fashion shows and campaigns, magazine editorials for big-name magazines like Elle.
She says “definitely in both jobs [modelling and hostessing] you get a lot of compliments,” which are of course “nice.”
“But there’s really no merit in how someone looks, it’s just how you’re born,” she says. “In the modelling industry, you really have to approach yourself as a product and as a business, so you take good care of your hair and your skin and you work out.
“But you need to separate modelling from what you think is important about yourself or your own self-image because people’s opinions in the fashion industry are always going to change.”
She says she would often show up to castings, where people would take one look at her and say no straight away.
“You just to have to be like, ‘I don’t fit the bill,’ not, ‘Oh, I’m not good enough.’”
So having an insider’s view into the world of modelling, does she think the standard of beauty presented in advertisements and magazines is unrealistic?
“I can see how the images that are presented are quite unreal and I’ve certainly been on shoots where the photographer shaves an inch off your thigh in Photoshop and you’re like, ‘Hey!’”
So we really shouldn’t be too worried if we don’t look as if we’re about to roll up to the red carpet when we’re herding kids to and from soccer games on the weekend?
“The end result is amazing with the lights and the makeup artist and the photographer. You just basically show up barefaced and they make all the magic happen,’’ she says.
“You get the Polaroid and you go, ‘Wow, is that me?’ You never look like that in home snapshots: photography’s an art and they’re creating an image.”
So what would she recommend to women instead?
“If you’re pursuing things that enrich you as a person, you’re not going to think about [how you look] that much,” she says.
“What people should focus on is themselves, what makes them happy, what brings them joy and then you’re going to look fantastic because you’re going to have an inner light.”
That inner light again. Maybe Haywood is not Canadian but really Californian.
So would the former model ever get anything done?
“No,” she says, as if I have suggested something as ridiculous as opening up a nail parlour in her hometown.
“Never, no. I’m going to be happy when I’m wrinkly. I want to be one of those sparkly-eyed, old, wrinkly women who just have a thousand good stories.”
Hey, I’ve got a lot of stories too. Maybe when we’re 80 we can be in competition for who has the most wrinkles and the best stories.
Look out for Sarina Talip’s story this Sunday on Chelsea Haywood and her book 90 Day Geisha: My Time as a Tokyo hostess in The Sunday Canberra Times Relax magazine.