Like a lot of the other girls, Alex had found out quickly that she was not beautiful enough to model. The lucky ones realized this sooner rather than later. But she was tall enough and skinny enough that people often assumed she was more beautiful than she was. A good trick.

It seemed stressful to me, cultivating a public image, or a personal aesthetic—like the sort of mind-set that could lead a person to worry during sex about whether the lighting was sufficiently cinematic.