I will tell you that posing topless for Time Magazine will get you about $300 and leg modeling for Victoria 's Secret will get you $1000 and going nude in front of a live audience on The Stacy London show will get you about $300, going fully nude for Braun Razor will bring in $800. And yes I feel the economy does affect the amount of money brands and magazines might put into editorials and ads. But stock photography isn’t the same quality so I think the phone might not be ringing as much, but the brands that do advertise and show they still exist; they will be the ones that succeed during this pressured time. Same with models. Will I go topless for $150 dollars verse $300? Well for the right editorial and ad campaign, yes. I gotta eat too.

I used to get pedicures and manicures weekly, sometimes twice a week, but I am giving myself home-made treatments instead lately. I use LUSH’s Lemony Flutter on my hands, toes and nipples. It seems to be doing the job pretty well.

She adds:

Please be clear in your mind. "Yeah I have a great ass, but it is all about the way you use it as a model." My current goal is to be the "ass" of an underwear ad campaign, maybe Hanes, or Frederick's would be cool"

Dreams can come true, people! Another effective tactic: sending nude photos to bloggers.

Every afternoon, he goes to Wendy's in Hell's Kitchen and reads for several hours with a magnifying glass—he's legally blind—as preparation for his three-volume treatise, The Encyclopedia of Categories: A Theory of Categories and Unifying Paradigm for Philosophy With Over 1,000 Examples.

The Intelligencer [VV] [via Boing Boing]

[Photo: novon]

Almost 5'4": The Truths of a Freelance Model [Kitty Guerilla]
5'2" Homeless Model-Apple Store Memoirist's MySpace Page Hacked? [FishbowlNY]
Isobella Jade [Official site]

First, a pair of runners-up:

Jayson Blair, who discovered the cure for cancer while training for the defense of his Tour de France championship at the Shaolin Monastery in Ulan Bator, where he was the Supreme Ninja Warrior, died today, according to his publicist J. Blare.

Jayson Thomas Blair, 35, known to the online blogging community as "Crazy Us Weekly Guy," was pronounced dead at 1:46am this morning after being transported unconscious from the SoHo Apple store.

Jayson Blair was a typical 21st century memoirist.

What is your best asset?

It's my energy. I hear it from the homeless guy on the corner. I hear it from my friends. Most people who do not know where they are going to sleep every night would be pretty pissy and depressed but because it's what I want to do, I have this energy. Also, I have my grandma's eyes.

Isobella Jade: 'I Had Wasted A Year Shooting With These Idiots' [FishbowlNY]

My Day: Isobella Jade, freelance model, author [Metro]

But it looks like Isobella's incessant self-marketing has done her some good: some publishers have reportedly contacted the wee vixen, and she'll be doing a series of readings — where else? — at some West Coast Apple stores.

Meanwhile, we were just thrilled to receive an email from the budding young star, in which she clarifies that only 10 pages of her book are about the Apple Store, where she stood and wrote the whole thing in heels. After the jump, revel in her ramble.

I thank you for the interest and write ups on Gawker.com....

I have been a nude model and even today I am a body parts model,going on castings for body double and "parts" ad campaigns such as a shoot I did for Braun Razor. But just for the record, yes I have done nude work before, but I am not a successful nude model...I am trying to be a successful "body parts model" and I have had my share of nude modeling with amatuer photographers, but these days it is about the ad campaign, the brand, the commercial, the paycheck. I have a college degree in Advertising and Marketing from New York Institute of Technology but after I touched the surface of modeling in college I chose to not claim to the suit stable world and instead run for the day to day grind of freelance modeling, finding my own work, becoming my own agent and giving up everything from my apartment to my clothing, to my stability for my dream and pursuits. This is something I am living today and I am still sleeping on friends couches and going on castings and I am living what I am writing about right this second. The book isn't a show show of my resume or flaunting my acomplishments, it is written for the underdog in any form of pursuit and it is a story about going from amatuer nude modeling to modeling in a professional manner and with well known brands. The book is based from the years 2001 when I am running in between my college classes to go on photoshoots with amatuer photographers for 100 bucks an hour to the year 2006, when I am living out of a suit case and pursuing modeling at a different level and marketing myself. It is about becoming a business women and the transformation I made from modeling for my ego and modeling for my sole income.

My most recent jobs this past month were a commercial for VH1, and it modeling for Teen Vogue and modeling for watch company EOS and White Mountain Shoes. I am a go-getter and this book was written at the Apple Store, but the book isn't about The Apple Store, only about 10 pages about the store... but the store has been a major factor for me to continue freelancing,since this past year and even today I do not have a computer or internet connection, it is kind of hard to have that when you don't have an apartment or electricity. But I have chosen this, I have a college degree, I have an education and another life out there with a stable paycheck if I wanted it. But I didn't throw out all of my clothing and live out of a suit case, and eat dollar menu at Wendy's and go to the Apple Store almost everyday for a year and half for nothing. The Apple Store has been a source for me to continue to do what I love and 90 percent of my resume has come from jobs I have obtained from research I have done on the Imac computers in the soho retail store. How do I write a computer in heels in a public place, for hours at a time? Well if I get a phone call for an audition or casting they sure of hell wont hire me in sneakers. What everything comes down to is: I am too emotionally effected by my pursuits to stop pursuing and my book is about just that.

5'2" Homeless Model's Story Generates International Appeal, Publisher Interest [Fishbowl NY]
Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Isobella Jade

My book is called Almost 5'4 but I am big lier... I am really only barely 5'2. My compcard reads 5'4" because I am lean and I can pull it off. That is why I think I am the most successful model in NYC perhaps because who else is modeling full time who is barely 5'2 hahaha lying on her card saying she is 5'4 just to get into the modeling door?

Hahahaha lying on her card she can pull it off so successful hahaha. But we don't judge her — Isobella is a writer who relishes her art. After the jump, the belovedly batshit dwarf revels in the joys of her craft, like a vixenish Faulkner.

On October 20th 2005 I first laid out my journals randomly into Microsoft Word at the Apple Store. The journals were my thoughts when I was just touching the surface of modeling, remembering my first photoshoot ever in my hometown of Syracuse, NY and during my sophmore year of college. It was about 60 pages of words. Then I saved it to my yahoo account. On November 4th 2005 I started to organize the order of how I wanted to tell my story if I ever got a chance to tell it one day. And as I wrote it I was living what I was writing. I stood at the Apple Store infront of a 17inch computer the one that I call " mine." I had been going to the store at the time for about 9 months. As I stood in heels for up to 2 hours at a time, my contacts and my mouth would go dry and without a blink of the eye I would pace back and forth from writing about my experiences to DOING the experience and the daily tasks of responding to emails, researching modeling jobs and places to send my comp cards. I was always in a rush running into and out of the Apple Store up to 3 times a day ... to go on meetings, photo shoots, and receive a potential paycheck and then right back to the store, I freelance so every minute in my day counts. From this past December 05 to January 2006 to February and till the middle of March, I have laughed out loud over it, typed frantically and received comments from employees to slow down and breath while I was staring at the screen viciously, vigorously. Sometimes asking a business man how to spell a word or two, right before I got to page 100, I grabbed a Wendy's Napkin out of my bag and saved a soda spill disaster all over the keyboard ,from a clumsy pre teen. I was at home at the Apple Store and I have even taken my heels off a couple times and stood barefoot as I wrote, and I wrote mostly in the evening and I was the last visitor to leave the store most nights. And while child howled and screamed for her mother, and 4 teenagers with dreadlocks crowded Itunes, laughing loudly with a "You gotta hear this," and swearing without shame, I let out my own smile and took a look to my right and saw 2 girls squeaking over their Myspace accounts, and then I took a sip of coffee, ... ... closed my eyes for 4 seconds, said a prayer and I finished my book. It was about 3 months ago, on the second computer ... on the right side store ... of the multi media table of the spectacular arrangement of Imacs. It was on a 17inch.

Isobella Jade: The FishbowlNY Interview
Earlier: Homeless Model Overcomes Her Woefully Inadequate Stature

Where Isobella wrote her book is a story in it'se self [sic]. She wrote her whole memoir which is over 250 words, while standing in heels infront of an Imac 17inch computer at the Apple Store in soho.

Over 250 words, and in heels? Not even James Frey could make up this sort of soul-wrenching drama. After the jump, a 191-word "excerpt" of Jade's story.

That morning it felt different waking up with this job waiting for me. A job that would be my best friend, it would hug my desperate soul and tell me that I wasn't wasting my time or fucking around with having a pipe dream. It was chance; it was a moment that meant at the end of the day I would have a new reason to continue trying to be a model. And motivation that I should. I had worked before, for over the past 3 years. Maybe a lot of it was amateur and bullshit and got me no where but I recognized the tickling orgasmic feeling in my stomach, the anxiety and the pleasure of knowing I had a shoot. The difference was I just didn't always have a person to call after the shoot and a voucher to be signed.

The door to be professional was opening, slowly, but it was opening a little bit. This shoot would be a level that I had been curious about when I was posing just for my ego with photographer pricks back in 2001 and at the time ignored my potential.

5'2" Homeless Model Writes Tragic-Cum-Triumphant Memoir at SoHo Apple Store [FishbowlNY]