MODEL BEHAVIOR

As those boys sang in "West Side Story," "When you're a Jet you're a
Jet all the way / From your first cigarette / To your last dyin' day."
And when you're a model, you're a model -- till someone decides that
you're not.

There is an ineluctable relationship between physical integrity and
human performance. The doping scandals in baseball reveal a curiously
archaic but finally anchoring passion about level playing fields and
players on the level. The Kate Moss episode -- in which the ethereal
supermodel was photographed ingesting cocaine by a London tabloid, and
was, as a result, fired by those companies whose wares she hocked on
billboards -- is another version of the persistent public hankering
for Truth In Representation.

It became unavoidable that the aloof, pouty arrogance which Miss Moss
has brilliantly portrayed for so long may reflect what she takes,
rather than who she is. An important element of the public and
advertiser response we are seeing is unforgiving -- alarmed and even
emotionally hectoring. Heretofore, viewers rose to the challenge of
Miss Moss's image -- that of a woman in muted reproductive quandary.
She added a quality of subtle menace to shoes or scent or shirts, and
suggested an elegance with an oddly postmodern secret they might just
be able to acquire. Not threateningly voluptuous, she let her
potential consumers decide that there, with some intrepid taste, extra
money and additional magazine subscriptions, "go I." But now, she has
offered us a challenge too far. It might have been easier if she'd
developed a paunch.

There are, of course, vexing moral issues in this case. Should
employers have the right to monitor the private behavior of people
they pay, and deprive them of income if they disapprove of what they
do? Should a paper publish, as London's Daily Mirror did, photos of a
person engaged in an activity which, while clearly illegal, is
nevertheless widely enough performed so that Miss Moss is no
especially scandalous freak? She is hardly the only model to use
various substances to maintain her weight and energize her capacity to
capture a crisp moment of both inner drama and external beauty.

In general, the answer to an employer's questions about privacy should
be, Keep Out. And besides, the fashion industry is a world apart from
such quotidian concerns. It fabricates objects and services which are
fiercely overpriced and intrinsically fragile. But a world which lives
by the pixel can perish by the pixel. Fashion is an expert fiction
turned into commercial reality by dazzled consumers, whose own
appearance is often comparatively banal. Beautiful models are, in a
way, the political leaders of most women. Yet like politicians, they
are dispiriting when they are corrupt. Buyers are prepared to take a
model into their dream-world, but the sellers are punished when their
reality turns illegal, and even frightening.

The silly U.S. Open ads featuring Andy Roddick depended recklessly on
his victories (which he failed to deliver). Miss Moss is unlikely to
recover her super-copious bucks before the next U.S. Open, if then,
because she's suddenly been identified as either a sad addict who has
to use perilous drugs, or a pompous princess who thinks she just can.
No doubt a poignant personal story is reflected here, but she has lost
her championship. People respond to effective models if they can share
their grace, not their disrepair. And it's remarkable that someone so
skilled among cameras would be foolish enough to act in public as Miss
Moss now admits she did. Her truth looms larger than artful fantasy.