Life as a Fake Beauty Queen in Small-Town China
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.peop...
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.
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.
Her blog is also quite interesting [4]
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/meredith-hattam/
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.
"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.'"
Until then, we'll have things like this: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_188894...
> It's a really short career, too; at 25, you're over the
> hill.
The voice, the situations, etc in this article feel similar to what I remember of this other article.
My Summer As a Professional Pretty Girl in the Hamptons http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/07/my-summer-as-a-professional-...
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...
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).
Especially after how badly China was treated by most western countries (and Japan) during the Qing dynasty.
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.
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.
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.