How does one start a career as an erotic plus-sized model?

October 25, 2010 7:05 PM

How does one start a career as an erotic, plus-sized model?

I am very curious about the field of adult photography, especially for plus-sized women. How do women in this field start? Is there a specific agency that handles applications, or do websites source and publish photographs on their own?

I don't want to reveal my identity due to the sensitive and personal nature of this question. Throwaway e-mail is [e-mail] .

posted by anonymous to clothing, beauty, & fashion (4 answers total)

ModelMayhem may be a good place to start for resources - it's the industry site for all sorts of modelling, and they have a pretty active forum for people in the industry (models, photographers, etc).
posted by divabat at 8:24 PM on October 25, 2010

Along with ModelMayhem there is also ModelInsider.com as well as various communities on Fetlife.com where you can find a photographer in your area who may be willing to work for trade (ie: they get to use prints in their portfolio as do you).

My boyfriend is a fetish photographer and he has taken some great shots of me (I'm a 40-something bbw). He works with a variety of body types and styles. Please feel free to message me if you'd like me to point you to the Fetlife communities and get a recommendation to a good photographer in your area that may be able to help :)
posted by tar0tgr1 at 4:32 AM on October 26, 2010

ModelMayhem is an excellent starting point. You're going to need a portfolio, and there are a lot of photographers on there looking for models to work cheap (or free) in exchange for the final images. Work with a few of them. Look for some that already have nice, professional-looking portfolios of the type of modeling you want to do. The photographer will probably have a good sense of where you might be able to model.

Once you have some good images, there are modeling agencies in every major city that handle this sort of thing. But you can probably do it on your own with a good website and smart marketing, particularly if you can get involved in the related community in your area.

Also, women -- even photogenic women -- tend to think that modeling is easy, and they just have to stand there and look good. Not the case. Youtube has a number of videos on how to model that are worth watching so that you know what to expect and how to take direction well.

Make sure that any release you sign allows you to use the images however you want. And, of course, take a friend with you the first couple of times you model for someone new.
posted by coolguymichael at 11:58 AM on October 26, 2010

Yeah, my ex-wife was on both sides of this industry (photographer and model), and Model Mayhem definitely was the center of all that. There are other sites, etc, but MM is probably a good start and has people from both sides of the camera and all sorts of sub-genres of modeling.
posted by wildcrdj at 12:56 PM on October 26, 2010