Of models and murderers

Illustration by: Ashley Fairbourne

 

It’s possible that I’m the only person who feels like models are one of the most difficult and frustrating types of human beings in the world, but something tells me I’m not alone.

One of the biggest turn-offs for me is when a guy tells me that he is a model. In the Instagram world, many people take some cool pictures with a DSLR and suddenly think they’re Marky Mark reincarnated.

A dear friend of mine told me that she had someone she wanted me to meet. I was interested because my friend really is so kind and selfless that I figured anyone she picked would be great. She began to describe him and as her lips pressed into an ‘M’ I knew it was coming: model.

“Oh, yikes.”

“What?”

How do I tell her? I’ve just never been a fan of a man who is too preoccupied with his looks and models base their entire lives around their looks. Have you ever looked at a model’s social media profile? It consists of selfies. Lots and lots of selfies.

An interesting fact about men who post an absurd amount of pictures of themselves online: Ohio State University released a study conducted recently involving 800 men and found that those who posted more selfies tend to display more self-objectifying, narcissistic and psychopathic traits.

Now, the word psychopathic tends to steer some people’s minds to some kind of Norman-Bates-status murderer. If your boyfriend posts a bunch of pictures of himself it doesn’t necessarily mean that he is going to grow up to own a lowly motel off the highway and stash his mother’s corpse in his upstairs bedroom. You can still take showers in peace.

But it does mean that he may be void of the ability to form some of human beings most basic connections. Psychopathic personalities exhibit a lot of amoral and anti-social traits, and though they may not grow up to stalk babysitters, they are a hard kind of person to create a lasting relationship with.

If someone is narcissistic or they self-objectify, that is different from a psychopath, but they still have problems maintaining emotional bonds and being a good partner. Most models, because of the obvious objectification of their profession, tend to display self-objectifying traits. But self-objectification often leads to depression and poor self-esteem.

For whatever reason, against my greater instincts, I obliged my friend. She was insistent that we would get along so well. We apparently both had “kind hearts.”

What the hell. She gave him my number.

Two weeks later I heard from him.

When you go out with a model, your senses become incredibly heightened to the calorie count of the foods you are about to stuff your face with. I opted for a salad and hated myself for it.

We sat down as he snacked on rabbit food and made a comment about how he usually only eats McDonalds. Yeah right.

“I’m on this diet my agency has me on,” he explains.

If you date a model and they turn out to not be a psychopath or display traits of narcissism or objectify themselves, there is still one more deal breaker that I think is worse than all of those other things combined.

They can be truly boring.

If the topic isn’t about their modeling or their diet, the only thing that can keep the conversation alive is talking about the weather. When that falls through all that is left is silence. Boring, miserable date silence. I had to end the date early because we literally had nothing to talk about.

Maybe psychopaths are crazy but at least I’ve never fallen asleep watching an E! Investigates on them. Better a narcissist than a narcoleptic I always say. Wait, I’ve never said that before? Maybe I’ll start.