“Fashion is changing, and so am I.” Model Ariel Nicholson’s essay on finding her inner strength.

Model and activist Ariel Nicholson spun into fame when she volunteered at the Ackerman Institute in New York, modelling for the Gender and Family project, whose images got picked up by Vogue - suddenly changing everything for her. Reflecting back on becoming modelling’s brightest talent, booking campaigns for Raf Simons and Miu Miu, Nicholson is set on being in charge of her image, and winning back her autonomy.

I began modelling when I was 16 years old, or rather fell into it. I was volunteering at the Gender and Family Project at the Ackerman Institute in New York, a program designed to support transgender children and their families through group therapy with a specific focus on community-oriented care. In 2017, Vogue magazine reached out to the lead coordinator, casting trans kids and their families for a story. I willingly and excitedly agreed.

At my first shoot, I felt utter giddiness, my stomach wracked with jubilation and nervousness. The story was released in August of that year. One day I returned home from work as a lifeguard to find my picture on the home page of Vogue.com, and the next thing I knew I was walking for Raf Simons’ fall collection for Calvin Klein. By the new year I was working for Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, and Prada. It was all so fast, breathless.I always knew about the ephemeral nature of modelling, but my gangly and doe-eyed 17-year-old self couldn’t fully conceptualise that it all had an expiration date, even after being told that from the beginning. Backstage at my first show, I told another model with a snowy pixie cut that it was my first show. She said that she had been modelling for a long time, and that her career came and went in waves. She indicated this by gesturing her arm up and down in an undulating motion.

Ten years ago, trans models didn’t have space to be themselves. If a model was trans, they were stealth, and if they came out they were often ostracised and shamed. Now, one can see trans models everywhere, and yet with heightened visibility for trans people comes the inevitable risk of exploitation.

Over the course of my career, I have often felt branded as a ‘trans model’ instead of just a model. It became infuriating and exhausting to feel like the only reason I booked jobs was to exhibit me to consumers to show that a brand or magazine was inclusive. Other trans models have voiced similar concerns to me as well, which begs the question: who is visibility actually serving? Is it serving the trans community? In some ways, yes. It is beautiful that young trans kids can have people to look up to in media that reflect who they are, and that fact in itself makes me emotional because growing up I didn’t have that. But for the most part, the use of models on the sole basis of being trans isn’t helping trans people, but harming them.

The nuance here is that hiring trans people because they are beautiful and talented is absolutely correct and should continue, but hiring them because they are trans is blatant tokenisation. Not only does this practice minimise the individual as a person by focusing on their transness, therefore reducing them to a diversity point, but also contributes to the trivialisation to one’s own trans identity in itself. To me, being trans is sacred and profound and deeply personal. It’s not something that can be sold, and so when one is hired only because they are trans, the thing that is being sold is an idea of transness and not the reality of an individual’s lived experience.

It is common knowledge that ideas and concepts can often be misunderstood and misconstrued, especially in marketing and our current hyper-digitised epoch, and so when identity is marketed as an idea in this way there is ample leeway for misinformation and hurtful rhetoric to emerge.

I don’t know exactly when or how this occurred, but I reached a point where modelling became my oxygen. Not only was it my oxygen, but it absorbed my life and started to become my entire identity. I was always praised by people in the industry for being ‘more than just a model’. I often blame the industry for placing this label on me, but it was absolutely my own doing. I branded myself as an activist, a student, an artist and a model. Thinking that it was necessary prove to everyone that I had many interests and that I was exceeding at all of them extraordinarily ended up having an adverse effect. I felt dispassionate about almost everything and therefore could not claim any of the identities that I purported myself to be. My high standards erased everything around me until I had become just a model, singular. But I never wanted anyone to see that.

I allowed modelling to become the most important thing to me for many reasons, but primarily it was because I had reached a point where I felt as if I couldn’t exist without it. I wasn’t receiving joy and validation in my daily life, and so I expected modelling to fulfil that role. It was a rude awakening to realise that placing all of my self-worth on modelling, a profession where optics are primarily valued over substance, just made the aching void within myself deepen.

Last fall, modelling reached a level that I had only dreamed of. I was on the cover of American Vogue and had the most successful season of my life, walking for top designers in Milan and Paris. I was so busy that I decided to drop out of school under the delusional impression that I would continue to work steadily. But the model at my first ever fashion show turned out to be right. Sometimes, modelling can be exhilarating and fantastic, busy and glamorous. Other times, perhaps even the next week or month, work can spontaneously stop. Fashion has a way of doing that… of chewing you up and spitting you out. In an interview that season, I spoke about my life as a ‘student and model’ and mentioned how school would always come first for me. A week later I had dropped out, never once even considering the possibility of putting modelling on pause. Modelling was everything. It was how I convinced myself that I was real.

Just weeks after I dropped out, work slowed. I was no longer working consistently, and eventually it all came to a standstill. Riding the foaming crest of a wave in a glittering cerulean sea, only to crash back down onto the shore again. I’m still scraping the grains of sand out of my teeth.For the longest time, I always blamed the industry for my unhappiness, pointing out how trans people still aren’t booking the biggest campaigns and how it’s often frustrating and exhausting to be trans in fashion. I can say all of this, and it’s true, but I need to take responsibility for my actions and choices. Fashion is what it is. I continually choose to be a model. I am not a victim of fashion. It isn’t fashion’s fault that I have used modelling as my only resource to be seen, heard and loved. That’s all on me.

Modelling became toxic for me because my lived experience was reduced to an idea, and the public reception of that idea became all that I conceived of my own self-worth. It all became a vortex that I allowed myself to be swallowed by. I used to stand for so much, consumed by ambition and passion. This all eventually soured when I placed my dreams and my idea of self on the fickle sway of public perception and an industry distinguished by being tumultuous.Visibility is the bare minimum. Identities shouldn’t be warped to fit the mould of a brand’s diversity agenda. I played the part for a long time, to a point where my sense of self disintegrated and my entire world lost its focus. I became a ghost of the person I used to be. Now, I’m trying to find her again, and perhaps even transform her for the better.

Magazine covers and likes on Instagram won’t give me the love and care I crave. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I still look at modelling as an avenue for me to feel valid, because in many days I still do. But I am trying my best to unlearn the story that I’ve told myself about what it means for me. I am deconstructing the walls that I have built around myself by constantly striving to validate, and love, and really see myself as beautiful and worthy. It’s difficult, but that’s my work.I thought that being a famous and successful model would make me happy. I’ve been on the cover of Dazed, of Vogue Italia, of Re-Edition and Love. I’ve starred in impressive campaigns. Did any of it solve my insecurities and make me happy? No. If modelling taught me anything, it’s that I need to love myself a lot more, and it can only come from my own heart.

For a lot of this year, I regretted leaving school and choosing modelling. But now I believe that I made choices that made the most sense for me at the time. I’ve done a lot this year. I moved to New York City, which was both challenging and fruitful, and dove headfirst into a career that I was always juggling with something else. I will probably go back to school at some point in the coming year. I want to continue writing and pursue acting. I know that I have plenty more to give, but for now I’m just taking it one day at a time. I don’t need to have everything figured out yet, and that’s OK. Being in your early twenties is confusing and full of contradictions.

I’m constantly transitioning, growing, becoming. And through all of this, from the beginning of my modelling career until now, all I can say is that I’m grateful for the lessons learned and the questions I have yet to answer.I’ve been doing this for half a decade, and the industry has changed drastically during that time. But so have I. I’m still modelling, but now I’m modelling on my own terms, continually reminding myself that I am more than an idea. That I am real and beautiful. Recognising my own worth is a radical act, and it’s terrifying. Healing is scary, but it’s worth it. Whether I’m working or not, I’m always working on myself. Because of that constant, I’m excited to see what the future brings, despite the growing pains.