GOLDFINGERS
Oliver Roberts got a rare glimpse into the best kind of manual labour: the highly moisturised world of hand models. Some of them also get a foot in the door
BEING filmed pouring beans out of a tin can be highly stressful. Not only are your competitors scrutinising you, there’s a guy with a camera hovering over you shouting “Action! . . . Pause! . . . Action! . . . Pause!” and, most nerve-racking of all, the body parts you spend an inordinate amount of time prepping and taking care of are on public display, nails and cuticles being assessed for beauty and suitability.
Hand artists are a rare breed of talent in the casting world. They’ll attend several such auditions in a year, working their hands (and sometimes feet) for the camera and trying to impress and seduce the casters with their correct preparation and presentation, with their knack for turning the straightforward act of handing over a card or pouring chutney from a bottle seem significant and elegant.
On the money rung of casting jobs in South Africa, parts modelling is right near the bottom. While a face model might earn, say, R10k for appearing in a print or TV ad, a hand or foot model will earn barely 10% of that. But keeping in mind that a lot of hand/foot models tend to be students, R1 000 for a day’s work (including free lunch) suddenly sounds like a pretty good deal. Top models in the US can earn up to $1 000 (about R14 000) for TV, and $5 000 for print ads, especially if they’re appearing as a hand/foot double for an actor or actress.
It’s Friday afternoon at Gray’s Casting Directors in Blairgowrie, Johannesburg, and a bunch of hand artists are gathered in the colourful waiting room, listening for their number to be called. There’s not much talking going on. One set of hands might recognise another, there might be a nod, a graceful flick of an impossibly creamy finger, but other than that it’s all very quiet and nervy and professional.
The casting brief, sent out to casting agencies, lists the criteria the advertiser (in this case a canned-goods brand) is looking for. Among other things, the brief stipulates the following will be required of The Hands:
1) The hands need to perform some actions so they can understand what they need to do for the stop-motion animation style of shooting.
2) They will need to hold their position as we move objects in the scene and then take the next photo. Repeat repeat repeat. A display of patience is necessary.
3) Weird tremors will make them impossible to use. They will also need a little stamina for holding arms in position for a while.
Today, cuticles and stunning metacarpals are not everything. A vabefore, riety of canned goods are to be featured in a series of TV ads, each with their own set of hands. So, as well as seeking out, say, the soft, manicured hands of a female office worker, the director is also looking for “white male hands, big and suntanned — they must look like strong hands, but not too grisly or hairy” as well as “older weathered farmer hands (but not too ugly).”
“Sometimes they want soft, sometimes they want rugged,” says Andrew Dover, a fiftysomething dude whose thick hairy fingers recently won the main part in an ad where a close-up of the handing over of a credit card was required. Dover only does rugged. Does he purposefully rough up his hands before an audition? “Yes.”
While Dover has the hands of a farmer, he could very well have the legs of a supermodel. It is well-known that legs that appear in pantyhose ads sometimes belong to men, simply because they tend to be more defined.
GRAY calls out the number of another artist. “Put your hands down, close together,” he says. He takes a photograph.
“No falsies, no glitter, nothing,” says Gray. “No rings, luvvy, please.”
Delia Ho, 31, and Jessica Poole, 22, have gone to other kinds of castings but this their hands-only debut. To prepare, both of them have been paying regular visits to spas and keeping special creams in their handbags. If any housework or dishes need doing, the gloves are on.
“Otherwise my nails wouldn’t look like this,” says Poole, flashing a simply breathtaking set of keratinous ungues at me.
The best of the best hands, I’m told, don’t even need to audition — they get the part on their portfolio and reputation alone.
Khadija Kathrada, 22, does toes too. She recently had her perfect feet featured on a poster for a nail bar. She wears corn plasters at all times.
Hands-wise, she goes for a manicure every two weeks. Constant moisturising, she says. But her toes are her moneymaker.
“If I wear sandals, strangers stop me in the street,” she says. “Everyone says I have such cute little toes.”
Today, Kathrada’s wearing shoes so I ask if she’ll remove one so I can see The Toes. What follows is the awkward and ever-so-mildly sensual moment of Kathrada undoing the laces on her left shoe and slipping it off for me. Nervous giggles.
They are . . . magnificent. And the foot. The foot has the highest arch and the smoothest heel I’ve ever seen. Those guys who sell pumice stones at traffic lights? Kathrada is one of the people keeping them in business.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I just have really small, neat toes. I’ve posted them on Instagram.”
It’s true — you can see for yourself @khadija.kathrada. One hundred and fifty-five likes so far.
One set of hands might recognise another. There might be a flick of a creamy finger