Taobao Girls
It’s hard to imagine top models Alessandra Ambrósio or Miranda Kerr posing in hundreds of outfits in a single day. But such is the daily routine of the “Taobao girl.”
Taobao girls are amateur models who pose for clothing retailers on the popular e-commerce platform, China’s equivalent of Amazon and ebay. They are particularly busy in the weeks leading up to November 11, the huge online shopping festival in China known as Singles’ Day. The shooting schedules of these models are counted in minutes, even seconds: they try on hundreds of garments each day, shift poses twice a second and change outfits every minute, with only 10 minutes break for breakfast and lunch. Cold and heatstroke are significant concerns for the women, since they are often required to wear T-shirts for hours in winter, or thick sweaters in summer.
The job is lucrative for the top performers, with some earning 10,000 yuan (US$1,535) in a single day. Other models are paid between 1,500 yuan (US$230) to 5,000 yuan (US$767) per day. Most Taobao girls are college students and amateur models who lack professional training. Industry insiders say the profession is destined to be a short-lived one for many women due to its low barriers to entry, high drop-out rate and deficiencies in worker conditions and management.