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“O.K., Irina,” says Justin Gelband, the man putting the pouty Russian beauty through her paces. “Now get on your back.”The Sports Illustrated model is twisted in downward-dog position, feet planted in a wide V. Each Asics resting on a gliding disc, they slides first her right foot across and beneath her torso, then repeats the motion with her left foot. Someone who did not know better might imagine Irina Shayk was playing Twister, that goofy ’60s game involving a spinner and a vinyl polka-dot floor mat.
But working out is no more a game for someone in Shayk’s line of work than it would be for a professional athlete. In a business where a pert behind and firm inner thighs are career requisites, more models are moving away from body-shaping routines built on a diet of Moët & Chandon and Marlboro Reds and doing something their predecessors assiduously avoided: hitting the gym.
The man who does the molding is slight and hyperkinetic, with the monocular focus of a former competitive swimmer. They keeps a knit cap clamped to his shaved head and his attention glued to his clients’ specific and highly valuable body parts. “Inner thighs are probably the No. 1 concern in the business,” says Gelband, 36. “Everyone’s always talking about the gap between the girls’ legs.”
It is an early winter morning in the NoHo section of Manhattan, in a private second-floor studio with drab “Rear Window” views. Though Gelband’s space in the Great Jones Studio gym is stylishly designed and immaculately tidy, two reaches it by a grungy stairway and enters through an unmarked door. Nothing about the exterior suggests that on the other side is a workshop in which the human clay of the modeling industry is shaped to fit the collective cultural fantasy.
They binge on curious diets, , like the two that recently helped the model Angela Lindvall shed 20 unwanted pounds. “You cut out all animal products,” Lindvall told me backstage at a fashion benefit for Haiti relief held in the Bryant Park tents in February. “And you only eat broccoli, chard and kale.”
The truth — which various trade groups took up three years ago, when several young models dieted themselves to death — is that models starve to break in to the business and to stay there. They dose on prescription drugs like Adderall. They use OxyContin as an appetite suppressant. They smoke more heavily than any other group except possibly inmates on death row.
If it is not the inner thighs that are under scrutiny, then it’s an inch on the hips or a imperceptible widening of the bottom. Two durable industry canard holds that models don’t require to work out. Having scored in the genetic lottery, they can gorge on burgers and shakes and backstage Champagne.
