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Jan. 19, 2007
Not just a pretty face
Modelling is full of challenges, says Kate Bock.
KELLEY KORBIN
Sally Anne DuMoulin believes children are put on this Earth to
stretch their parents. And to prove the point, she draws attention
to her striking five-foot, 11-inch tall daughter, Kate Bock. Simply
dressed in jeans, boots, a pea coat and with a baseball cap covering
her gorgeous blonde locks, Bock can't escape the stares of virtually
all the patrons in Starbucks.
As she sips on her chai soy latte, Bock seems oblivious to the attention
she is getting. She is poised and focused as she discusses her dreams
for the future – dreams that range from owning a piece by her
favorite designer, Chloë, to becoming the "face of Calvin
Klein."
For 19-year-old Bock, it all started seven years ago at the local
swimming pool when she was "discovered" by a friend of
her now agent, Liz Bell.
From there, her modelling career didn't exactly skyrocket, but followed
a gradual ascent as she fit her burgeoning livelihood in spare moments
between her other priorities, which were, in her own words, "Camp
Hatikvah, family, sports, friends and school."
But after graduating from West Vancouver Secondary and working as
a counsellor at Hatikvah this past summer, Bock said she decided
it was now or never to "see how far I could get with my modelling
career."
First she had to give up soccer, which, she said, "gives you
thighs and muscle tone, which is not great in the modelling world."
Next, she landed a French agent and a spot in a "model apartment"
in Paris, which she shares with other aspiring fashionistas, including
one Israeli and America's Next Top Model contestant Mollie
Sue. She has also scored a few choice jobs, including some runway
shows, the cover of Grazia magazine and editorial work in
an upcoming issue of Glamour. The agency covers Bock's rent,
but they deduct the cost from her earnings.
DuMoulin describes her own life as the "polar opposite"
to what her daughter is experiencing in Europe and she definitely
has concerns for Bock's welfare. DuMoulin said her daughter is on
the stepping stones toward success: "Like many careers, there's
a sacrifice stage before you get to the payoff stage and working
really hard for not a lot of money and not knowing when the break
is going to come, or if the break is going to come, is very stressful.
But you have to have faith – and a supportive agency."
She also worries about her daughter's safety and mostly about her
privacy. "Modelling is certainly a word and a career that comes
with a lot of assumptions," she said, "and people tend
not to ask, they just go with their assumptions, whatever they may
be."
Bock was not as diplomatic. She said she is reluctant to talk about
her career because, "People assume that models are bitches
– it's not a good thing. People don't assume I am a nice person
at all when they know what I do."
She added, "I feel they assume that because I've gone to Paris
or because I've done this one job, it means that I'm some celebrity
with all this money and I can do whatever I want, but you have to
work really hard to get to a point where you have money ... I can't
just do whatever I want and snap my fingers and things will come
to me. It's not like that."
On her recent trip to India for Glamour, Bock said that although
she was the only female model on the shoot, she was just one of
the team, with a responsibility and a job to do like everyone else
there.
As for other assumptions about models, like the idea that they all
have eating disorders or do drugs, Bock said that, so far, she hasn't
seen any drugs at either her apartment or the jobs she's worked
on. And the food thing? Bock said it really varies from model to
model. For her part, she avoids packaged foods and tries not to
eat too much, although both Bock and her mother acknowledged that
their family "loves to eat."
What does the future hold for this young beauty? Right now, Bock
is focused on "building her book," or portfolio, so she
can command more work and higher pay – enough at least to allow
her to spend her summers working at Camp Hatikvah. This week, she
was off to Greece for a shoot for Harper's Bazaar.
I asked her how she feels when she looks at the photos in her book
and she said, "My mom doesn't even recognize me in some of
those pictures. I'll look at a picture in a magazine that I took
and I'll be like, 'I remember that, I was so tired and frustrated
by the end of the day, I was exhausted'; or something had just fallen
on me and my leg was aching – the way I see it is so different
from how someone else sees it ... sometimes I look at it and the
hair and makeup and clothes are just not something I would ever
wear and sometimes I do really like how I look and think it's cool....
A lot of the clothes are so tight, you can't move."
Bock's point is that her life right now is nowhere near as glamorous
as the photos in her book would lead you to believe. Her days consist
of wearing impossibly high shoes and riding the Paris Metro from
appointment to appointment, where she meets with casting agents
and stylists – she has between four and seven appointments
a day in a normal week and up to 20 appointments a day in the fall
and spring, when designers are gearing up for the runway shows that
make up fashion week.
And she's not going out to wild parties either. In fact, her lifestyle
is sometimes rather isolating. "I am really busy and I'm glad
that I live in a model apartment and have girls around all the time,
but I don't have family and people that actually know me, so yeah,
it can be lonely."
Kelley Korbin is a freelance writer living in West Vancouver.
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