LOOKING FOR A NEW CAREER NOW THE SHOOTS ARE OVER

BY 25, most people are getting settled into their careers. But Welsh glamour model Jessica Davies is now having to look for her next career. Her job took her around the world and led her to live the high life.

But, when the lads’ mags closed and the shoots stopped, it was back to reality – and she was working back in a pub in her home town.

Jessica had never dreamed of being a glamour model. In fact, the first time she was asked to remove her bra in a photoshoot, she said she refused.

That anxiety is long gone, and she has a hefty catalogue of work to her name.

But, with the decline of the lads’ mags, and the change in the industry, the work has now stopped. And, aged 25, she’s in the position of needing to come up with a second career, because her first has already ended.

Her modelling journey had started aged 14 when Jessica went to The Clothes Show in Birmingham, where she was spotted and was put forward for a competition called Teen Queen.

Jessica, originally from Aberystwyth but now living in Cardiff, went with her Dad to a shoot and knew straight away that she wanted to be a model.

Aged 16, she entered Miss Wales. At the pageants, she was routinely told she should consider modelling and aged 17, found an agency in London.

It was a year later when glamour modelling was first mentioned to her. The reason, quite simply, was the size of her breasts.

“You never see fashion models that have big boobs,” she says.

To begin with, she didn’t remove her bra, but knew the discussion would come up. She told her agency she wouldn’t go topless, which they adhered to.

“It’s one of those things. At the time, because I hadn’t done it, I didn’t think anything of it.

“I thought I would tackle it when it came to it,” she said.

“I thought ‘I can’t do that, or I don’t want to’ and then I had a boyfriend and he didn’t like it.”

While on a shoot, the photographer said, ‘OK, take your bra off now.’ I said I don’t do that, I phoned my agent and she said, ‘You’re there now.’

“I didn’t do it then and it was really awkward. I was the new girl, I didn’t know anyone and I had to stand there. But, it was a female photographer, and she was more understanding.”

Rather than losing her work, it had the opposite effect. The lads’ mags started bidding to get her for an exclusive, first t shoot.

She went for Zoo, because of the funds, and d had to warn her family.

“It was all a bit awkward but I never remem- ber having the conversa- tion.

“I am really lucky they y are supportive, and never really said anything negative about it,” said Jes- sica.

Weeks after the shoot, t, the magazine came out t and, then a student, she went with friends to buy a copy to see the fourpage spread.

She still has a copy on her coffee table, from October 2012 which has on the front the “Amazing Zoo discovery...Jessica Davies topless for the first time”.

“I was really nervous, you don’t know which picture they’re going to use.”

Her career grew, taking trips to America to take part in Hotshots, a controversial charity calendar for Help for Heroes. She also went to the Bahamas.

In her heyday, she probably did a shoot a month, a good shoot paying £1,000 a time.

She was then a student, but even then knew the industry was changing.

“I got into it when it was on its way out. It used to pay really well, maybe £1,000 a day, but it slowly declined.”

Magazine journalism has taken a hit due to the internet. Lads’ mags were the same. The magazines began asking women to send their own pictures in for free. Because people did so, the demand for the costly models like Jessica declined.

Her pay went down to around £800, and eventually to around £100.

She expected that one day her age would play a part, but before that even came into play the print market declined, and many of the titles she had been a star of were closed.

“I knew it wasn’t going to last for ever, but I didn’t think it would be 25,” she admits.

“I did think that by the time it came I’d be onto the next thing.”

“It was a slow decline, and the magazines went one after the other. I knew they were going, but I never thought that would be it.

“It was really full on for maybe two or three years, and then I said to my agent, ‘I want to do this’ and I really went for it. I thought it was going to go somewhere, but it didn’t.”

She enjoyed her career, she said. “I don’t regret it”.

“I regret that back then I was shy, and maybe I didn’t put myself out there, and maybe I could have had that job or another.”

She’s spoken on her blog of the abuse and trolling she’s faced.

While now she can sit and laugh at the ludicrous nature of it, when she found herself back at home in Aberystwyth working in a pub it did hit her hard.

“I loved working in the pub, but people had what they expected of me as a model and then you’re in a pub being paid £7 an hour. Some, she says, were supportive. Others, would load a picture of her, invariably half naked, and drunkenly ask “is this you?” or call her a s**g. The hardest bit, she says, was “getting the grief without any of the rewards”. “I was missing it. I was back in Aber and it’s so isolated from anywhere. I had a few friends who were models, but they were in Cardiff. “I wasn’t going to London, we had a lifestyle there and the way to get there was a six-hour journ ney on the train.” She’s now in Cardiff, and still working in modelling. She’s done some styling, marketing and prod duction for shoots, using her own experience in front of the camera to produce the best shots. There are two types of online a abuse she faces. The first being the almost weekly em emails where she is contacted by so someone who has been conned by so someone using her image. Catfishing, as it’s known, has se seen her contacted by people who ha have been conned by her picture be being used on a dating website, or m more seedily, on a pay-per-view we webcam. She is emailed, often by older m men, who say they were expecting to see her, have paid, and they ha haven’t. “I try to be sympathetic with th them,” she says, but there is no way of her tracking how her image is be being used. “I get people sending me messag sages of abuse, I say ‘it’s not me’. Sometimes Som they’re fine, and other times tim aren’t.” Th The other, is the abuse for being a “bad “ba feminist”.

“I was doing something I wanted to do. In this day and age, where it’s all been flipped, and about women taking control of their bodies and their sexuality, that’s amazing, but that’s what we were doing five years ago and those people were the ones who got the mags banned.

“It’s so frustrating. Back in the day, the Gay Times and Attitude had implied nude models on the front cover and it was really sexual and noone would say anything about it.

“But we couldn’t be topless on the cover. I was told I was there to be objectified and I was a bad role model.

“But I was taking control. I am not there to be a role model. People would say that, but I didn’t become a glamour model to become a role model. I don’t think that’s why anyone does it; it’s not our job to be a role model, but people think you’re giving a bad name to women.

“It’s so frustrating, I’m just comfortable in my body and I’m doing it for my own benefit.”

As we meet, she’s in leggings and a baggy shirt.

She’s used to people commenting, saying, “Oh, I didn’t expect you to be in that.

“I don’t go out to get male attention. It’s very different when you’re on a shoot and you get your boobs out. You do your job and go home.

“You go on with your normal life and people expect you to be topless all the time. I’m like, ‘I’m going to Asda, I’m not going to have my boobs out,’” she laughs.

Jessica studied sociology, but knew she didn’t want to do anything with that. Her current problem is that she doesn’t know what comes next.

“I’ve gone from having lots going on and a clear direction of where I thought I was going, to being back at square one.”