Modeling agency
| Modeling agency | |
|---|---|
 | |
| First appearance | To the Top, page 4 July 14, 2010 |
| Related characters | Sandy, [{Sandy’s mom]] |
The Modeling agency is the unnamed business in Sandy’s home city that signed her as a teenage model. It occupies a large, dark-fronted building on a city street, and it has appeared on-panel exactly once, during Sandy’s job meeting in To the Top.[1] Every later reference to the agency is dialogue, photos, or news articles about Sandy’s modeling.
Description
From the street, the agency is a tall facade of dark vertical panelling, noticeably gloomier than the pale buildings on either side of it. There are no windows at ground level, just a few small, narrow ones set up high, and the entrance — a pair of tall double doors in the same dark panelling — nearly disappears into the wall around it. A bit of low shrubbery grows along the base of the building near the doors.[1]
Inside, the doors open onto a long, straight corridor with a wide carpet runner and walls hung close with large framed portraits of young models in professional poses. The corridor ends at a counter-style reception desk with a computer monitor, staffed by a receptionist in a smart suit with her hair in a bun. Meeting rooms open off the reception area, and a further hallway beyond it is lined with statues in model poses alongside still more portraits.[2]
History
In To the Top, Sandy’s mom drives her daughter into the city and drops her off at the curb without going in herself, sending her through the doors with some last-minute coaching: “What they want to see is professionalism, loyalty, and charisma.”[1]
Sandy walks the long portrait corridor alone, whispering her mother’s three words to herself the whole way down, and is startled when the receptionist speaks up. In an instant she switches on a bright, confident persona and introduces herself as being there for a meeting with a Mr. O’Dell, who told her to ask for him by name. The receptionist notes approvingly that she is on time and directs her to the first door on the left, past a row of young women waiting near the desk.[2]
Afterward, Sandy says she got the job and has been doing “a lot of this kind of thing lately,” adding modeling to a packed schedule of school and sports.[4]
The building itself is never drawn again, though Sandy still speaks of the agency years later. During a walk in the park with Mike, she credits it with much of her sense of worth: “The agency takes care of me, they treat me like I’m important.. people rely on me, now.”[5]
Trivia
- The young women waiting near the reception desk are rejected applicants, according to Veronica’s commentary. One of them “is meant to be ripping up her resume and throwing it in the air, I don’t think it was properly shown though!”[2]
- The statues in the inner hallway are cats in model poses. Veronica’s commentary jokes, “perhaps one day, Sandy, you will be a cat statue.”[2]
- In the non-canon what-if story Elementary School Sweethearts, that universe’s Sandy is with the agency as well, and suspects Katie only sticks around hoping for an introduction.[7]