Years ago I remember reading stories of a market for "White" guys to rent themselves out for business meetings in China. If you looked anglo, and could look presentable in a suit, the Chinese companies would hire you to make them look more serious as though you were their American officer/VP.
It makes me want to know more about the writing process for pieces like this.
Does she write it alone, and send it off to various publications who might edit it slightly but otherwise run it as written (or not at all)?
Is she paired with a ghost writer who complements her amazing story with similarly amazing writing?
It seems unlikely (in general) that the people with the best stories also happen to be the best writers, so I would assume there is a lot of ghost writing and editing going on, but it would be great to know more about how this particular sausage is actually made.
She is a college grad, so I'd giver her the benefit of the doubt. Sure there is an editor involved to provide feedback, but she could have been studying to be a writer anyways. E.g. Journalism is a tough field to find a job in, but plenty of kids have a talent for it, so go off and get crazy life experiences to write about.
There are (probably, I don't really know) so many people out there who are either good writers or have good stories, it would not be so surprising if there are a significant number of people who are both.
Doing a quick google turns up [1] and [2], which describe her as
"Meredith Hattam is a web designer and writer based in New York, and an advisory-board member for the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry."
Her homepage [2] also points to [3], and the writing there seems to live up to a similar standard. I can't tell if she writes everything on there or has simply submitted a story, but the tone of the few pieces I looked at sound very much like her.
MEREDITH HATTAM is a web designer and writer based in New York, and an advisory-board member for the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry.
Wow, there's a cottage industry for booking young models as fake national beauty contest winners to participate in fake international beauty contests. The quotes are surreal:
"My first stint as Miss America for hire had been that September, in the desert oasis of Dunhuang, for the city’s International Grape Festival. It was a surreal experience in which 40 models, including me, were paid to walk down a catwalk for about 2,000 locals. Later, we rode camels across the dunes of the Gobi Desert, crisscrossing the sand in single file. The photos of all 40 of us on camelback—some only in bras, to dodge tanlines—are wonderfully absurd."
"For the second pageant, in October, I was hired to cruise around Dalian in a fake gold Mercedes golf cart with five other girls for three days, in an effort to lure potential buyers into investing in a miniature replica of Versailles. A printed guide to the event offered fictitious backstories in Chinese about each contestant, and her purpose there."
"Of the nine 'fashion shows' I booked while in Beijing, only two were on a runway. The rest were fake pageants, car shows, and trade shows—but I was not informed of their nature until I was en route to the events. Models flagged as having low earning potential will do fake pageants frequently, as they’re easy to book. I once met a Russian teenager who was stuck traveling on a bus for 10 days across rural China as 'Miss Argentina.'"
Chalk it up to new money and not knowing how to spend it. I'm sure China will develop better taste eventually (goes for ad agencies, their clients, and the customers being vied for).
That's the modeling business. Talk to anyone who's done it. Below the top 100 or so supermodels in the world, models make less than a mid-range programmer. Most modeling jobs aren't glamorous. There's trade show work, being a "booth bimbo". There's catalog modeling ("OK, next is item 25631, the blue sweater, and hurry it up, we have twenty more to shoot before lunch"). Mostly there's doing something else while waiting for the next gig. Ask any actress/model/waitress in LA. It's a really short career, too; at 25, you're over the hill.
> It's a really short career, too; at 25, you're over the
> hill.
Meh, maybe. My Mom makes some pretty good pocket money ($600 a day-ish) as a photogenic grandmother and general old lady doing catalogue and advert work for cruises, insurance, retirement homes, that kind of thing.
She wrote a piece back in January[1] that gives a lot more insight into the logistical and management aspects of the arrangement, as well as the risks (financial and physical).
I just don't understand this fascination of Asian, and more so East Asian peoples, with the West. Replica of Eiffel tower? Why would you want that when you have the forbidden city, the great wall and maybe countless oriental palaces??
Especially after how badly China was treated by most western countries (and Japan) during the Qing dynasty.
It is a quite complicated subject. It is partly a result of colonialism, partly of nationalism, partly of globalization and partly of the way world unfolded after WW2.
Basically, beginning of the century, when Asian countries got 'freedom', all the political leaders who got power were educated in western philosophy. They read western books, spoke western languages as a sign of education and adopted competing western ideologies as the model of society. The old, native one was discarded because it was a memorial of defeat. And people accepted it. You can see that everywhere - Gandhi was a barrister who wore coat before he become a monk (and all his lieutenants, from Nehru to Ambedkar, wore suits), Mao wore western clothes. Korean, Japan - they are the best examples of it. Rich people had become rich by following foreigners, and when foreigners left them alone, these same rich westernized people became rulers. Since then there is a fascination with everything west. There are some poor people who are still clinging to the old system, if they can. But the middle class has almost no option if they want to get rich.
As I said, it is a very complicated topic in sociology and there is no way I can explain it, as much as I understood it, here. I am eventually planning to write a book, starting from a dedicated blog. Will update here when I do.
I would really love to read such a book! I have been researching a lot on this topic myself, to be honest. Specifically about why India and China (the "East") are so far behind the west. And in the case of India at least, the fault lies a lot with the way history is taught. It is assumed that India was a mostly agrarian economy and the people had no way of defending themselves from superior European guns. While that is partly true, it also had a huge industry in both firearms and metal working before the British conquest, apart from Textiles.
So for India I could understand that colonialism created a West-oriented culture, but couldn't see why so in China, which was never under a foreign power. Your point about the rulers and intelligentsia being westernized makes sense in this context.
For the same reason you would eat Chinese food when there's hamburgers, listen to Gangnam Style when there's Beethoven, or watch Japanese anime when there's Disney?
Also, China's a big place, the developer putting up a replica of the Eiffel tower is doing so precisely to separate his development from all the other ones out there.
I don't think it's the same. I've also noticed that nearly all apartment complex, villa, or furniture mall advertisements feature a style that could be described as Baroque. There are markets for traditional Chinese style furnishings, but it's as if the default for new construction is European style. This is at least true in big cities. Historical ancient cities sometimes mandate all the buildings have the same traditional style. And older homes are more likely to contain more traditional Chinese art and furniture. But for young people decorating their first home it's cheaper and much more common to buy furniture that mimics Western design.
The voice in this article is very familiar. Is this the same author of the woman that wrote about high-worth dating in New York? Living in a hotel room with multiple women while going on dates with rich guys... I can't remember the details and I've done some initial google searches but haven't found the original.
The voice, the situations, etc in this article feel similar to what I remember of this other article.
I would bet that the sounds and smells of riding a camel across the desert in China are similar to riding a rich old fat guy in a hotel room in New York...
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.peop...