Caitriona Balfe Wrote a Powerful Essay Calling For More Legal Protections for Models
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Caitríona Balfe has written a powerful essay calling for increased legal protection for models.
The Outlander star, who worked as a model for almost ten years prior to starting her acting career, is urging New York State lawmakers to pass a bill that would ensure basic protections for those in the industry. During her modeling career, Balfe says, she experienced "massive violations of [her] rights as a worker" that would not be tolerated in other industries.
"Despite my success," Balfe wrote in the Hollywood Reporter, "I still experienced the detriments of working in a largely unregulated industry, like not getting paid on time, if at all." She also points out the inherent sexism in this lack of regulation – modeling is an industry largely made up of young women and girls, and their labor is not seen as work, rather "the benefits of winning a genetic lottery. So, models are perceived as being privileged, with no talent or skill, and therefore unworthy of basic protections or even empathy."
Balfe goes on to call out the predatory practices of modeling agencies, and highlight the differences between her experience as a model and as an actor—the latter being a unionized industry. Thanks to unions like the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), actors are guaranteed legal protections, as are most workers throughout Hollywood. But the same does not apply to models, and Balfe is using her platform to try and change that fact.
She concludes her op-ed by calling on New York lawmakers to pass the The Fashion Workers Act, a bill that would "close the legal loophole through which management companies escape regulation and engage in predatory behavior." It would require timely payment and enhanced health and safety regulations.
You can read Balfe's full essay here at The Hollywood Reporter.
You Might Also Like
