Nicole Renee - myth of beauty… rewritten

The job of beauty is a world where the most beautiful is often disregarded. Yet I find that the most interesting lives and personas are those of models, rather than designers and photographers. A model is a world of her own… which isn’t accessed through her beauty, paradoxically.

I have wanted to interview a woman working as a model for a while. I myself have been one for over 20 years and I knew that there are women, in this business, whose genius is being expressed precisely as a model. And it is not only because they are beautiful in the way fashion loves women to be, but that through modelling they get to be more than just models…

One of these women is Nicole Renee. She worked as a model for fifteen years and, through her development in the beauty industry, she became fascinated with the topic of how women see themselves and awaken into healing and growth states. Her experience as a model was a door to herself, and to women’s universal feelings, thoughts, fears, in regard to their self image.
Dr. Nicole Renee PhD is a clinician and writer who specialises in women’s mental health.

And so the question is, did she choose to specialise in that specific topic AFTER her experience in the modelling industry? Or unbeknownst to her consciousness, did she choose to live the experience of a model, and how the fashion industry influences the minds of women from the earliest age, BEFORE actually help women detach from all ideals pushed onto them, so to find their inner unique and unmeasurable beauty? We will never know…

If you had to tell a little girl about beauty and being a model… What would you tell her?

This is a very provocative question. One of the things I was reflecting on about this topic is, you know, when I got interested in modelling I was not a little girl, but I was very young - I was 15, and I see myself as a girl. A model essentially is a beauty object, paid to be a beauty object and when I started I didn’t really think of it as a job or a career. It wasn’t really on my mind at that age to work and make money. Eventually I put myself through school whilst modelling professionally, but none of that was in my view at the time. When I started I was just captivated by these beautiful images I would see in fashion editorials and coffee table books.

I signed with an agency at 15 and then a week later I was at my first fashion show. I will never forget the feeling of being backstage and seeing these older girls who just seemed to possess this confidence. Their possession of their sensuality as women, they seemed just so cool and glamorous and comfortable in their own skin.

And I think that image, or the representation of that kind of feeling, as a young woman thrilled me!

Over time, of course you know, the reality of all of the different sides of modelling - the good, the ugly, all of it - starts to settle in and it becomes for many of us just a job that we do. But at the time when I started, my young girl-self was just captivated by the promise of what modelling seemed to offer as a woman.

I think through my research as a woman recently having to reconcile with what modelling meant in my life, how it shaped my identity, what has it been for other women in terms of their relationship to beauty and self image and this role of a model… I think I’ve come to grapple with more just how limited or one dimensional it is that kind of “access to feeling yourself as a woman” or being applauded to be “so free in how you express yourself” or be seen as a beauty object - yes there’s a sort of allure and promise to what kind of pleasurable experience you can have there. But it’s quite limited, if that’s your main mode of seeking pleasure or validation or fulfilment. Like it’s not going to come from modelling really.

Obviously I didn’t have that deeper reflection when I started, I was just excited. So this idea of what I would say to a young girl, I’m still wondering that myself. And I think part of it is because I’m still trying to consider in all of this my young girl-self and what she was seeking when everyone kept telling me “O you should model!”. And I was like, “O really? What’s that all about? Should I?”

I just stumbled into it.
So much is emerging for me in talking to other women like you, who wonder too what this part of our journey meant.
I certainly work with young women a lot in my clinical practice as a therapist, young women who have similar questions about how they see themselves and what it means to be a woman or to be seen as a woman in our culture. And kind of the complexity of that when we get into beauty as a topic, or beauty questions.

I feel protective of little girls. I know that.

I do too. I would also want to offer them tools to search elsewhere for what they’re looking for. That womanhood is not just to be found in fashion, as you said… like there's so much more to womanhood. Society and men cannot teach let alone dictate what a woman is/should be/should look like. Only Women can. 

I too started at a younger age, my first photo shoot was at 12. I remember I was such a baby inside, although my body was already developed… I remember I had an urge to grow up. It was something between me and myself. I wanted to be a woman. I just didn’t know how to be one… who was I to aspire to? I think we cannot deny the fact that young girls ask silent questions such as this and then they look around and observe, who’s there as a model of reference? You know, besides your mom and your older cousin or your neighbour… who’s there? We turn to TV and magazines and well… models.

What you’re speaking to is possibly the need of new stories, new myths… new beauty myths even. In my childhood I was also fascinated with myths and fairytales. In a way I think that propelled me to become a psychologist. This love of story and human imagination, beauty of all of that. But I think the stories and many things I was loving as a child very much involved the symbol of the beautiful maiden, and I didn’t realize until looking back that starting modeling at such a young age I really organized so much of my life about this role, about female beauty, at the expense of pursuing other things. Even though I went to study and I had different side jobs along the way, so much of my time outside of just being a teenager at school and later at college, so much of my sense of self was wrapped up in doing this specific thing: of pursuing work that was completely related to my physical appearance, and how was that valuable or not, or how was that judged as good enough or not by others.

And I don’t think I realized how much that actually limited me because I was trying to do all these other things just to offset the focus on the superficial. I’m sure it has taken a toll which is why I have been really obsessed with this topic. 

Just like you I wish for more stories and more images of what it means to be a woman outside of the male gaze. As women we sort of struggle to find our own language even, to extrapolate how we see ourselves outside of this cultural gaze as it relates to beauty. 

It feels kind of an emerging conversation to be having. What does beauty even mean to us as women? How is it important in our lives, irrespective of the male gaze?

In modelling that always felt confusing to me. Modelling felt like this world about beauty and art and yes capitalism comes in, and the patriarchy comes in, and the male gaze comes in… but it’s substantially its own world where uniquely women get paid more than men, for example. Or the focus is on women and their empowerment, in some ways? 

And yet how do you see a profession where women do earn more than men but only when they fulfil that very man’s ideals? I’ve been wondering about this… because provocatively, it looks to me as if money is the reward for becoming a living fantasy.

That’s a good point, and I think what’s really hard trying to talk about modelling is we know from our experience that for every example you could highlight as something that felt empowering for you about modelling, there’s a million examples of ways we’ve felt exploited. There’s always this kind of tension between the positive and the negative parts of modelling. And in this you’re right, a model is portraying a fantasy that is likely not her own and that gets repeated and practiced. And we get paid to be skilful at producing and reproducing that kind of fantasy image, or aura if you will.

You know, actually I think that this obsession - to use your words - of the superficial got you on your own quest. I mean, you are immersed in a society and how else can you write your own myth without experiencing the imposed myths?
I wonder if you remember what you considered beautiful when you were younger and how that changed over time, in relation to you…

I wrote about it over the weekend but here’s what comes to my mind is a couple of things. First, you said something very provocative earlier about your relationship to modelling, at least initially, it felt like it was about the relationship with yourself or wanting to see yourself a certain way. And I also remember when you were participating in my research you said you had this question about the muse, and why are women oriented toward becoming someone’s muse. And I think that that focus of how I’m seen in the eyes of people gradually was practiced through the modelling profession. But when I had started and I think what it initially meant to me, I think of that scene I was describing to you earlier of being at my first fashion show: I still had my braces on, I didn’t yet get my period, I felt like a dorky kid from high school. I remember looking at these women backstage who seemed very confident, women in their sense of power, embodied and very alive, in a way that felt very beautiful and inspiring to me… at the time an insecure teenager. And I can remember thinking that they were very physically beautiful, and that they were attractive by society standards. I also remember seeing them undress and being quite nervous about how commonplace it is to just be backstage and just take off your clothes. 
So I was watching these women who I thought were so cool and had clearly been modelling for a really long time, and I remember seeing them undress and seeing that they had certain “flaws”. Like they were not these perfect barbie dolls, they were “real women” but also very beautiful in my eyes. I just remember being more struck by the way they were in their bodies, that seemed very alive and comfortable in their own skin. I think that is what got lost on me overtime, especially with social media as you can see how every image is tweaked and curated to be this flawless, airbrushed, almost unreal kind of image.

When I initially got into modelling it felt more celebratory to me of my own natural form physically, of other women too. What I saw back then was yes women who were chosen to be models because they represent some version of physical beauty in the eyes of the fashion industry, but they also evoked this feeling in me of ‘O to be a woman is to really be confident in yourself and feel into yourself, almost.’ 

Modelling is a weird role where it’s actually encouraged to put yourself out there and be like ‘look at me!’ That was an exciting idea but in reality it was very confusing to me. The job of modelling: overtime it became more about performing a certain fantasy. 

The time at which I started to step away from modelling, and focus more on my psychology work was actually the time in my life that was the darkest time in my life. I was going through a lot of hard things in my personal life and a lot of loss, and I wasn’t modelling as much either. It was a big identity shift for me, and I started for the first time to look at modelling in a deeper way and how it had shaped me and my sense of self, kind of at the same time that that persona was starting to die in me. There was a level of upheaval that forced me to confront what kind of stories I had been living by, to sit with difficult truths.
It’s been quite enriching to grapple with what modelling has meant to me beyond just a job.

I always told a story about myself when probed about modelling that I was not very psychologically affected by it. I’d say things like, O this is just something I do, it’s just a job, no big deal, I’m not really affected by it. It was actually a very hard transition to step away from it. I still model a little bit here and there, but definitely not a full time pursuit anymore. I just went on a long tangent, I’m not sure if that answered your question. 

I think modeling has been one lens through which I understood myself more deeply. I was only ready to look through that lens of subjective beauty at a time in my life when it felt that in my life there was a lot of ugliness and heaviness.

“Just a job that I do” the famous words.

I mean you asked me what a model is, and I always think of all the models I’ve talked to about modelling… the first thing they say is how much it makes them cringe to tell people what they do. How uncomfortable it is to say that they’re a model. I would diminish modelling or hide it entirely, feeling somewhat perpetually embarrassed to be doing it, especially while I was pursuing other things like academia or for a while I also worked in tech. There is definitely something taboo about it, that speaks to a lot of ways in which beauty is very significant but complicated.

Perhaps because the element of intelligence is utterly removed from this profession. And also, perhaps because the value of modelling and being a model is not in the model herself but in the image she produces. I had an issue with being perceived as frivolous and stupid, so whilst being a model - so an object of beauty - I tried also for the longest to hide my physical beauty.
Yet after also much reflection, and after the multiple conversations we had you and I, I believe the taboo and shame tied to admitting ‘I am a model’ … is related to what a model represents, that is beauty; and so what is beauty? Beauty … I came to the conclusion that among many things, beauty in a woman is power. Sadly, I think women - especially at the age we start to model - have not been taught to yield and cherish and respect that power. On the contrary, a model usually gets disempowered by her agents, used by the clients, and gets metaphorically walked on by men. I would be ashamed to possess that quality and not be able to use it for myself. Actually, after years… that is exactly how I felt. Still feel at times.

How’s your relationship with being seen and being looked at, right now that you don’t model? 

This is why I chose models to study. It’s not just that I find this specific profession interesting, I do find this phenomena of how we present ourselves in the form of images to be something we’re all grappling with. For example with social media and how we portray ourselves. For me now, in terms of social media, I struggle with the question of how I want to be seen in my professional role as the clinician. Part of the clinical practice that I’m building - with other women I’m starting an integrative psychiatrity practice focused on female health - I specifically don’t want it to be a brand or a business driven by my image. Not that I don’t want to put myself out there in this new professional chapter but I want my work to be not really related to my physical image and therefore to modelling in some way. 

Now social media, for me like for many other people, is just an aesthetic playground where I still enjoy taking pretty pictures, so to speak, of different parts of my life. The cliché highlight reel, I would say that’s how I engage with Instagram right now. But it still brings out a lot of insecurities or self consciousness around context switching between professional roles. 

I’d be curious to know more about what you see when you look at my Instagram specifically…

This is the thing, I don’t see you. I see your body. And in a way what I see is those beautiful images covering your beautiful mind, your studies, your path… which I perceive in snippets of stories where you share for example the books you are reading.

I think that I don’t know where I stand on that fully. I haven’t arrived at a conclusion with how I want to engage with Instagram, since I have mostly used it as an extension of modelling for so long.

With my clinical work, I’ve been training and working without much desire to share any of that process. Much of my clinical work is private, for good reason. I do enjoy using Instagram as an aesthetic playgrond, but I long to share more of my voice and perspectives in ways that are authentic to me, and I suppose I don’t know that I feel an image-based platform is the best for that. I am exploring how I want to be seen in a new professional role after so many years modeling. When you say, ‘I see your body, but I don’t see you,’ you are addressing a kind of hiding behind beauty – which is part of the model’s role, too. For me, health in modelling has meant developing a life that is also very separate from modelling – and I don’t have much desire to use Instagram to broadcast that. Most of my days consist of treating patients, writing, reading and working on creative projects. I look forward to sharing creative projects outside of modelling when I feel ready to

Personally, in the aftermath of me leaving the modelling profession I did not want to post photos of myself nor wanted to have photos of myself taken.

I noticed that too actually. I’ve noticed that change in certain moments where I feel a disinterest in engaging with that anymore, and I think the primary way I’ve gone about my work so far outside of working with patience and going to the clinic and doing my training, has been through writing. And so that has been so much a process, as you probably know, of solitude, and being quietly listening to yourself. That is where I’ve done quite a lot of uncovering work. And the question is how do I want to be seen in this? Because in a way when you’re writing your ideas or your process and letting people into that, that’s a very vulnerable kind of gaze - where people are seeing into you deeply, in a way that’s far more vulnerable that taking a photo in your underwear. At least for me it is.

Now, I’d like to invite you… speaking your mind freely… if you could rewrite the myth of beauty a little bit, how would you rewrite it?

I would start by saying that confronting the “ugly parts” of one story can be a deep process of beauty. A beauty that is more sustaining, more meaningful, more about an inner radiance than some superficial metric that you hit or fail. 

This idea that just like our wounds can become strengths with healing, I think the parts of our stories or our experience where we’re sort of stuck in insecurities, or shame or pain, or don’t feel beautiful or celebratory of ourselves or accepting, these are actually the ways in to feeling beauty in oneself. 

I had to reclaim the beauty of my own story, and so I began writing about it in addition to meaningful therapy and plant medicine experiences. After years focused on a lot of inner work, my nervous system felt different, more peaceful. I felt more joyful, radiant. After I survived the PhD, I let myself slow down more and listen to myself about what kind of psychology practice felt most aligned for me now. In a way, that’s a question about what feels most beautiful in terms of how I direct my energy, what kind of people or environments I work in? What do I want to create to inspire beauty in the healing process for others? I see these professional questions interwoven with beauty questions, too. 

I feel most rewarded in my clinical work by helping women reclaim beauty or wake up to their own beauty in some way. I came to realize through the winding paths I had been down with so much trial and error and exploration in my life that I had always been seeking beauty in some way. I love studying and practicing psychology because the opportunities to be with the beauty of human experience, of this life, are endless. And there is a great pleasure in that. And peace.

And if you could rewrite the profession of a model, how would you do that?

In the professional sphere I long for models to have a more authentic agency around the financial, legal and business structure of the work. If models had a union for example, or more rights that are sort of non-negotiables for any other career. I wish that models had more protection around the more financial and legal parts of their work. You know modelling still feels kind of like the wild wild west in terms of a career, even if you’re making a lot of money it’s still very easy to be exploited and you’re never fully in charge of your work, which is really challenging to navigate especially as a young person. I think much more guidance and protection needs to be in place, if I could change anything in modelling that’s what I’d focus on. 

Dr. Nicole Renee PhD is a psychotherapist trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and integration and is currently writing a book on women’s relationship to beauty and self-image. Her clinical practice is located in the SF Bay Area, where she provides psychotherapy services, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and psychedelic integration services in-person and via telehealth.
To connect and find out more about Nicole's work, check out here