On November 25, my social justice group and I met in a cafe near school with Iman Abdulmajid. Iman said in her early years she was a refugee from Somalia because her mother had feared for her fathers life. She was a major in political science and had never worn makeup, heels, fancy clothes, or seen a fashion magazine in her life. When she ran away, she pretty much had nothing because of the few possessions you can carry as a refugee, but was able to get a job as a translator because she spoke Italian. One day, she was on the way to University when a man stopped her and asked her if she had ever been photographed. Iman thought he was trying to pick her up, so she kept on walking, but he was able to get her attention and prove that he really wanted to photograph her, and that he wasn’t a fake. The man said he would pay her, but Iman only agreed to have her picture taken if he paid for her tuition, eight-thousand dollars. The man agreed, and from there on, her modeling career shot off. In 1976 she came to America for the first time, and began to really learn what life as a model was like. She found that in America, black models were being payed less than white models, but she thought that was completely unjust, and insisted that she would be payed the same amount, or quit modeling. She did end up staying in the modeling business until she was sixteen though, and would send a good amount of the money she received back to her family in Africa.

This is a photo of Iman

Another thing we talked about with Iman, and what we have been asking everyone we interview is her opinions on women in the media. She believes there are two types of advertisements to women and girls, one type being magazines like People, and US. The magazines beautify and reveal to much of people than they need to be revealing, or beautifying. The other type of advertisement is fashion and the runway. Iman told us that most girls on the runway are so skinny that their bones have to be retouched to make the illusion that they are healthy. The expectation for these models to be so skinny greatly damages their health in a time where health and good food is vital for growing. Iman also said girls who are turned down because they are considered to large will become very self conscious about their weight, and think badly of themselves. She told us her motto: Compare-despair, because she said there will always be someone who has something better than you; you have to find something you like about yourself. Meeting with Iman was such an amazing experience, and I learned many interesting facts about life in the modeling career.

Here is a link to Iman’s website for her line of cosmetics: http://www.imancosmetics.com/