Her book tells the story of Adrienne who lives among the works of the Louvre Museum. When she becomes a mannequin at random from a street in Paris, her world changes: from spectator of the beautiful, it becomes an object. She learns how to tame her image that removes her from her first passions and the appropriation of her body.

Beautiful but ungrateful

"From childhood, I was told that I was beautiful, and it is in spite of me becoming my number one identity. But Lea derives no vanity from it, "having no merit in that." The lucid look on this modeling profession, of which she tells the scenes without blush or language of wood, and that at 29 years she still exercises from time to time with photographs or showrooms for certain great brands (Hermès, Valentino, Agnes B or Dior a year ago), is not it, in fact, spitting in the soup? "I've met a lot of great people, notably creators, and I do not forget that. But with the agents, those who manage our career is sometimes untenable. "

Physics and Culture

Writing allowed him to take the necessary distance with the obsession with beauty, indispensable in this trade, but tyrannical and navel. Hunting by the kilo too. Her hip a little too much, this detail a little too much ... "I was embarrassed with my buttocks. So one day she dropped it. Without bitterness. His measurements (1,78 m, 83-60-89) have ceased to be the main part of his life, and the castings, his permanent anguish. As cultured as her narrator (Sorbonne, master of letters, Ecole du Louvre), she was able to relate here this union of beauty and fashion, with a look enriched by her knowledge of painting and sculpture.

Flesh-colored thong

For some castings, she must, along with the other "candidates", scroll in string, so that one can gauge her physique. These flesh-colored strings constitute her basic garment: it is in this inframinimal outfit that she is mostly waiting for dressing, in the sight and to the knowledge of all. The subject became object. But do we ask the Venus de Milo to put on a bra?

The book or the book?

This novel, full of sensitivity and culture, precision of which also makes a true way of using the profession (the details of the contract, the constitution of the book, the photo sessions, the great moments and the galleys) the story of a girl who is not limited to her pleasure to be seen and to stir up desire: she also has her own desires, her unhappy or frustrating love affairs, her humor, and a form of impertinence and controlled dancing that makes her charm - and her talent as a writer.

Away from the body of Lea Simone Allegria, ed. of the Seuil, 18 €.