Top model Cameron Russell, now 36, has a new memoir ‘How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone’, and it sounds hot. On the book’s cover, original supermodel Christy Turlington calls it “A unique and honest perspective on the fashion industry.”

The model and her partner, the filmmaker Damani Baker, live in New York with their two-year-old daughter, five-year-old son and thirteen-year-old stepson.

Verity Parker styles the outspoken fashion industry and environmental activist in the usual luxury brands lineup, with cover looks by Miu Miu shot by photographer Clément Pasca [IG]. While Cameron wears expected casual-elegance fashion looks, industry money-maker bags are front and center in the fashion story. / Hair by Sabrina Szinay; Rei Tajima

Reading her Sunday Times UK [IG] interview with Megan Agnew in the March 10th issue, we learn that on her second fashion shoot, the young-model Russell was told she had “cocksucker lips”.

The long-time activist’s words prompt an AOC recall of an exiled fashion photographer known for routinely demanding blow jobs from both established and young rising models. Rumors were that his very large c##k was hungry for release 24/7, and he invited models to stop by for ‘free’ snaps in his studio. Many of the girls were ‘happily’ featured on the photographer’s blog, as a testament to his sexual prowess.

The Goal Was Model Submission

Russell comes at the topic of this hopefully-waning, fashion-industry reality from a fresh perspective, not an exclusively sexual one.

The topic is ‘submission’, and even the industry’s top editors require it — or certainly did require it — until the age of model activism began.

One day, Russell, a key leader of pushback in a #MeToo world, began blowing up these landmines.

Known as the Ivy League model who made a TEDx Talk about modeling in 2012, Cameron tells Agnew over Zoom:

“It does not actually feel good to have to constantly acquiesce.”

“As a model there is constantly this expectation of intimacy,” she continues [with Agnew]. “Let me throw my arm over this person. Let me smile and giggle in response to whatever uncomfortable thing that was only uncomfortable for me, it wasn’t uncomfortable for anybody else [on set].”

The Cambridge-raised daughter of very successful parents, Russell “launched herself off 20ft platforms into the sea on family holidays in Maine” and was typically first to go, with the boys standing behind. Her parents taught her to sneak into lectures at Harvard and MIT from world-famous thinkers. In the AOC archives, we noted along the way, that the fearless young woman wanted to be president of America one day.

A Guest Stopping By In An Adult World

Russell describes herself as a “guest stopping by in an adult world”, one where consent and boundaries were either vague or nonexistent. Young models learned to get along to get ahead. Agnew notes:

She writes about being called “jailbait” and about a photographer miming oral sex during a shoot; another saying he wanted to “shoot a Lolita story” with her; and another, on a work trip, “grooming” her to get into bed with him when she was still a teenager. “Maybe later you will say this is rape, but it’s not,” she writes in her notebook at the time. “I chose to be here.”

The Megan Agnew interview rolls on; read it in full.

Surely the book will provoke renewed conversation about how far we have or haven’t come in protecting the rights of fashion models. AOC’s perspective is that we’ve made major progress in our new-world industry, and it will be interesting to hear an update from the models themselves. ~ Anne