Model, Signed to Norman and Norris Mailer
[Signed to Norman and Norris Mailer] Gross, Michael. Model, The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. First English Edition. 1995. Book is in good condition; dust jacket is in good minus condition—pages have yellowed due to age, and the jacket has fading to the spine and a large repaired tear to the front cover. This book is signed to Norman and Norris Church Mailer. It is inscribed on the title page, “To Norris and Norman—Truth is stranger than fashion! Amicably, Michael Gross.”
This slightly rambling but anecdote-packed social history of modeling begins at what was then the ending, the 1990s supermodel phenomena and its apotheosis, Cindy Crawford. The book then returns to modeling’s modest begins in the early 20th Century and progresses forward, with much on the delicate ecosystem (ego-system?) that developed between models, agencies, photographers, and stylists. It includes profiles and interviews with all of the important 20th Century models. Norris Church Mailer, to whom this copy was inscribed, modeled for Wilhelmina in the early years of her marriage the Norman Mailer. She was an Arkansas native who met the famed author when she stood in line to have her book signed by him in Little Rock. According to her New York Times obituary, someone once commented that she was perhaps the only woman in Arkansas with whom Bill Clinton had not had a dalliance. Her (truthful) reply: “Sorry, I’m afraid he got us all.”
“The model business remains, as it has always been, a seething morass of beauty and money, grace and envy, sensuality and lust, yearning and backstabbing, glamour, greed, and glory beyond measure.”
--Michael Gross
