A lot goes wrong at some beauty pageants, including sexual misconduct and financial exploitation. Flore Pensaert from Lokeren, Belgium, came up with a brilliant idea to draw attention to these issues. She created a calendar featuring 16 former participants of such competitions. The models in this calendar were all given catchy names such as Miss Communication, Miss Understanding, and Miss Behave.
Flore says: "The contracts often contain clauses stating that, as a participant, you are not allowed to say anything negative about the competition. If you do, you risk a fine of up to €5,000. This prevents participants from protecting one another by warning them."
Personally, I believe models should always be able to warn each other about bad competitions and/or photographers. No secrets about what happens during a shoot. And pushing models beyond what was agreed upon beforehand is definitely a no-go. This is why websites such as Purpleport are so useful for finding people to work with. On this site, you can indicate if a collaboration with a photographer (or a model—that happens too!) did not go well.
Initiative: Flore Pensaert
Photo: Paul Van Landeghem
Photo of Flore: Bart Peeters
Source: VRT.be