Model transitions but expects to carry on earning as much as pre transition.

[Rainbowshit]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12890405/Fashion-model-Frances-Coombe-sues-agency-civil-rights-violations-claiming-career-destroyed-came-transgender-told-insufficiently-masculine-work-man.html

they always look so unwell after transitioning.

She destroyed her own career. Did she really expect to just switch to male modelling? 🙈

They don’t ? They don’t sign a contract to represent you in a particular way? ie. A female model?

If a record company signs a deal to an artist for a pop album and the artist writes a folk album, wouldn’t that constitute a major change in contract?

Do you think it's ok for people to lose their jobs because they are trans?

You can't be serious.

This person is a model who no longer fits the category of looks they want.

Fuck all to do with being trans.

There are successful trans models who have certain desirable features.

There are men and women who will never be models. The vast majority will never be.

If she'd gained a significant amount of weight do you think they still would have kept hiring her? When your entire career is based on the way you look and then you change that look, there are going to be some problems!

You don't get a participation trophy. You're at work. You're paid to fill a role. If you cannot fill that role, they won't give you a contract or whatever, regardless of gender identity.

This type of thing hurts my head... so narcissistic! Even Kate moss has said about the harshness of 'go sees' but this numpty wants to sue for not being picked?

Ridiculous narcissistic behaviour by the model here. The result of people being led to believe their individual rights and their feelings trump anything. Imagine being the company trying to deal with this complete nonsense and then being taken to court by her at the end of it.

Model contracts are given to people who meet the look that is popular with the clients the model agency work with.

This model was hired to model women's clothes because she met the brief.

As a Trans Man the model is no longer meeting the brief. The Agency did not want to represent the model as a Trans man. That means the model had the choice to continue to accept jobs as a woman or to get no jobs as a Trans Man, they continued to accept the jobs and as such had to look the way the client wanted them to look, with the hair style, make up and clothing that the client selected.

I dont like the modelling industry, but its hardly a secret that models don't get to choose their own aesthetic when working and if this model wasn't willing to present in a way they wanted them to present then they are in the wrong job.

Shit in one hand, wish in the other. See which fills up first.

She chose to do a job which is based entirely on how you look, and presumably the company was looking for a particular type of look when they hired her.

Surely in many ways models are self employed based on their looks so if people don't want to hire them because they don't like the look then they are under no obligation to. And if the model doesn't like what they are being asked to model then that's up to them to walk away but they might have to compensate their agency who sources work for them at a cost.

This is a classic case of fuck around and find out...

The world of female and male modelling is very different - it's a cutthroat business and you are extremely naive to think the sexes are interchangeable.

It didn't sound like the agency handled it well. They should have made it clear that they wouldn't be able to find work for her as a man but could continue to work as a woman as long as she kept the same look.

The agency took her on for her look. If she'd tattooed her face she would have been dropped. Taking T changed her look and that didn't work for them.

Surely they is too short to qualify as a male model now?

Men and women aren't physically the same shocker!

I have a feeling he/ she would have been kept if he looked the part as a male; fashion world is fickle and if he made a stunning/ interesting looking male it would not matter he is trans. But he is definitely not a model material post transition - bad skin, very bland unattractive face, pale, angry and ill looking... No one would pick a boy who looks like him for modelling, so he basically destroyed his looks and expected to keep the job which is 100% based on looks. Hmmm...

I'm sure if they put on 10 stone they would surely be in the same position. They were singed because of their "look".

Surely they've "broken" their contract by changing their look?

How does a modeling agency ‘force’ a model to wear female clothes? Surely a model is contracted to wear what the client hiring them wants them to wear. The model either chooses to do the gig or not under the contract.

If a modelling agency has contracted a female model to wear female clothes, wouldn’t it be a breach of contract to refuse to model female clothes?

Also, what are "female clothes"? Plenty of men wear skirts. I was told gender identity ideology wasn't about stereotypes?

After the transition to he/him the agency requested Coombes be ‘more masculine’, presumably because while high fashion is sometimes edgy-androgynous the majority of fashion consumers still shop in a binary menswear or womenswear section and brand marketing is about flogging stuff?

Besides ‘androgynous’ is almost always synonymous with ‘young’ and modelling is one a handful of occupations where 30 is ‘old’.

There are always a few exceptions to the rule but the vast majority of currently working fashion models are tall, slim, of proportions that fit the designers sample size and young. They are expected to have neutral, versatile, hair and have no body modifications nor any noticeable cosmetic surgeries. They are expected to maintain the measurements listed on their profile and neither gain nor lose weight without prior discussion with their ‘booker’.
It’s all very tedious and not particularly nice but there are lots of alternative professions out there, and most models have a relatively short modelling career and then go on to do something less restrictive.

Agencies drop ‘talent’ (whether that be models, musicians, actors, writers etc) when the ‘talent’ falls out of favour with the client base. If a model doesn’t fit a designer’s man-proportion requirements but is no longer willing to take woman-proportion jobs, they won’t get sufficient bookings and their agent will drop them in order to take on other, more bookable models instead.

Being signed to an agency isn’t like a normal job, there are absolutely no guarantees of income and most employment rights (such as maternity pay, sick pay and holiday pay) do not apply.

Being told to present in a feminine manner and not bring up gender identity at the booking stage sounds like practical advice intended to maximise job opportunities and thus keep up Coombes’ income stream (and the agency’s cut of that income) especially as the agency switched to advising Coombes to present in a more masculine manner (when Coombes went from identifying as non binary to identifying as a trans man)

The employee accused of misgendering says he’s a gay man who uses ‘she’ for men as well as women.

Should be an interesting court case to follow at least, all the recent UK tribunals have been in comparatively boring industries!

Hopefully Coombes has since found a job that doesn’t require the keeping of a marketable appearance, and is now free to present in manner that makes Coombes feel happy and comfortable.

as someone said, if he had put in 6 stone then the agency would have dropped them/not sent them for any work, and there wouldn’t be any court case as it happens all the time for less than 1 stone.
Continue to dress as a woman or we'll fire you for being trans" is a pretty forceful position.
on the face of it of course that’s unreasonable, but so is ‘we will fire you unless you pose nude* until you read the back story that someone signed a whole contract to do a nude calendar then wouldn’t take their clothes off. A perfectly reasonable moral stance but does make you unemployed in that particular role (absent additional features like the employee feeling at risk, which is a separate claim)

Yes. Good point !

presumably she was originally taken on because she fitted the agency's requirements for their women models. Its not the agencies fault that just because she has decided she is now a man that doesn't magically also make her the ideal model for men. So giving her the choice of still going for the women's jobs, (not forcing her unless they dragged her kicking and screaming from her house each morning and forced her into the clothes on pain of death) puts the ball back in her court. Either she does the job she was employed to do or goes and finds another agency to take her on.

And as she had a choice of continuing to model the ranges she always has done or not get much work why should people be forced when talking about women modelling and going for modelling jobs for women's clothes to refer to one individual as a man. You can't make other people see you how you feel inside.

As for it being reasonable not to expect to be dropped by your agency, why wouldn't you expect that? They employed her to do x. She's now saying she can't do x anymore but she'll do Y instead, but they didn't employ her to do Y.

Any weight - a client books a model to fit the clothes, they don’t provide clothes to fit the model.

I am a also sure there is a market for androgynous models, but it will be much smaller and probably sufficiently filled by people who are 22.

It’s a brutal industry.

McDonald's are hiring.

She wasn’t asked to ‘dress as a woman’. She was told she would only be sent for jobs that required female models - which is what she is. She wasn’t fired either. She decided that because her agency would not go along with her wish to be seen as male she would sue them.
Modelling is entirely dependent on what one looks like. She chose to change the way she looked.

The situation does raise interesting questions.

Let's say a female model on the books of an agency transitions to be a transman. A client requests a female model. If the agency asks the transman to go along, that would offend the model's new identity and quite possibly would piss off the client.

Another client requests a male model. If the agency sends the transman, that would please the model in terms of validating their identity but would most likely piss off the client.

The solution from the model's point of view is that when requests for male models come in from clients, it's the agency's responsibility to persuade the clients that what would suit them better would instead be to use the female model identifying as a man. But this would be a nightmare for the agency.

Basically, there has to come a point when a trans person becomes responsible for the consequences of their transition in terms with how the world perceives them. It isn't for the whole of reality to bend around the self-perception of the trans person.

I think what the agency actually did was take the model’s picture off their website. They were at fault if they didn’t tell Coombe what they were doing and if this breached their contractual agreement with their client (Coombe) - but I suspect that was because of the disagreement over classification. However model agencies aren’t well known for treating models well.

I think the agency’s argument would be that they would treat any model the same way if their appearance changed significantly - I assume this is covered in contracts.

Women in the U.K. and US have successfully sued production companies when they have lost acting rolls because they are pregnant, but that is because courts found that the pregnancy could be disguised. The equivalent would be asking for a company to change the role to suit the actor.