I read Model Summer by Paulina Porizkova. It has 322 pages. This book is about modeling.

When I was reading this story I expected it to be about the glamorous world of modeling and what it would be like to get the opportunity to be someone in the fashion world. However, Paulina knows the industry inside and out because she has been a model for the majority of her life so after reading this story from someone so experienced I really had second thoughts! I think that the message she was sending in this novel was that it isnt all beauty and money; its also a dirty and corrupted industry. The character goes through so many struggles trying to make it in a world that is based solely on outside appearances; she is sexually assaulted and introduced to drugs by the photographers she is working for. I have watched Americas Next Top Model since the first season and Paulina is one of the judges that continually tries to make young girls understand that the career isnt as it seems. This work made me wonder why we envy celebrities and those that are on the covers of Vogue and Sports Illustrated, because their lives arent any easier than ours. I used to think that models like Heidi Klum could just take a few good photographs and live easy for the rest of their lives; however they had to work hard to get to the top. They did have to go to their go-sees and be told they had ugly teeth or bad skin, for example just like the character in this novel. I cant even imagine how someone could constantly take having their flaws put out into the open and still manage to smile for a camera and to make themselves beautiful by someone elses standards. This is not the kind of lifestyle I would ever want to have after reading this novel, because to make that big money and gain that respect you do have to be perfect according to the world. The quote by Alexander Pope that Paulina includes in the beginning of the book describes exactly how I saw the main character Jirina. It reads in youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare I do believe that Jirina is much wiser than her fifteen years of life, and she seems to be the only character in this novel that does have more to care about than just getting a magazine cover. She did encounter so much hardship during her model summer and it did hurt me when I realized that Jirina had lost her opportunity to be a child but you come to know Jirina through this book and you know that she will take all of these experiences and learn. However, I believe that she says it best when she said at the end of the book the more I learn, the less I know because a new world had opened up for her and she was never really sure where it was going to take her.