The lure of the glittering glamour international may be hard to withstand. A shot of your face splashed larger than life on a billboard or a thrilling function in a TV industrial can novel-ishly flip around your life. You end up a semi-movie star, your fan following on social media dramatically will increase, and your buddies start seeing you in a brand new mild. To get to the point wherein this could take place, all you need is that one lucky ruin — but if you have no clue the way to get it, and but the desperation doesn’t go away, be careful of your subsequent step.
A number of gullible modeling aspirants are falling into traps set by way of smooth-speaking, social media-savvy racketeers. Their victims are commonly starry-eyed and ill-informed, regularly from small towns and desperate to make it big. Most of them haven’t heard the saying: “If a proposal seems too appropriate to be real, it possibly is.”
IT’S JUST SO EASY TO CON
In the absence of a regulatory body for modeling agencies, it’s clean for con artists to cheat the green hopefuls. Even when they’re fleeced, the aspiring fashions don’t method cops, fearing harassment and mock. For them, awareness comes too past due, and at an instead excessive rate.
Explaining the rip-off, style photographer Bijoy Raghavan says, “Shopkeepers or property dealers pretend to be modeling agents or photographers. They pick out up different humans’ paintings and skip it off as their own. Abroad, you have got regulatory our bodies such as MAMA (Managers And Models Association). There’s no such frame in India, which makes it easy for racketeers to perform.”
In their initial days, these young people have little or no assist in phrases of expert steering. “Racketeers trap them in the name of having them paintings, take the money, and vanish. In many cases, the scammers literally shut down their office and run away,” says Raghavan.
YOU DON’T NEED A CARD to work as a model!
One of the purple flags is the point out of a modeling card; any agent who talks approximately its miles a fraudster. Fake groups let you know to pay for a version/artist card. They also ask for registration/club fees that would be everywhere among ₹2,000 and ₹50,000. Genuine modeling agencies do now not ask for any in advance expenses. They take a percentage of your price once you get a few words.
Fashion photographer Praveen Bhatt says, “There’s no such element as a registration fee for modeling. Also, you don’t require a version card. This is a scam. I can’t believe that human beings can fall for it. There can be no such factor as a model card because there’s no authorized frame in India to trouble such a card. Also, by no means pay cash to someone who ensures you work. Nobody can guarantee paintings in this subject.”
PAID AUDITIONS? REALLY?
The fake companies also ask fashions to pay for auditions. It’s not just the metros wherein such faux auditions are held. A 25-12 months-antique from Roorkee, Uttarakhand, on the circumstance of anonymity, shares that a so-known as modeling co-ordinator approached him on Facebook, presenting to get him a break. An audition becomes held in a cramped, rented corridor in a rundown locality, for which the ‘co-ordinator’ charged ₹500 consistent with man or woman.
“There were approximately two hundred younger those who auditioned for roles in serials, ramp shows, and TV advertisements. The director of the enterprise promised that he’d launch us along with a huge call from Bollywood. I went to the audition. After that day, we in no way heard from the one’s humans,” he says.
Genuine auditions are in no way paid, explains Pranav Awasthi, director, Glitz Modelling. “If every person asks you to pay for auditions, remember that they’re faux. Most of them are staged with the purpose of creating short cash through dishonest,” he warns.
TALENT, NOT MONEY, MAKES YOU A MODEL
Bhatt says that fake modeling businesses have mushroomed in India within the past few years. “It’s tough to bust them as they perform via social media. They take benefit of the reality that young people are actually desperate to emerge as successful in a single day,” says Bhatt. Every month, he comes across 10-15 instances of aspiring fashions being cheated with the aid of faux dealers. Bhatt these days uploaded a video on Facebook, warning models to live away from such dealers.
