“Like Scheherazade…I know I can only be powerful if people are listening, and I must be powerful if I want to survive,” Cameron Russell writes in How to Make Herself Agreebale to Everyone: A Memoir.
When we meet Russell, who would become a world-famous supermodel by the mid-2000s, she is still a sporty teenage Bostonite who dreams of becoming president. But after being scouted at the beach at age sixteen, she travels to New York and is quickly signed by a celebrated modeling agency. “I imagine it’s the same as finding oil in the backyard,” Russell writes of her dawning awareness of her own beauty—and its worth. “To think: Maybe I’m going to be a millionaire, but also, I really shouldn’t be selling this.”
Russell’s ambivalence intensifies as she becomes more successful and, consequently, experiences the dangers of her profession. “I say nothing. For the first time in my life since I was a baby, I have no idea how to speak,” Russell writes after being sexually assaulted by a prominent photographer. “It’s bizarre. I look at the mute self walking around and wonder where I am.”
If the first half of the book details the journey that leads Russell to losing her voice, the second half is dedicated to reclaiming it. By now a bona fide supermodel, Russell examines her newfound comprehension that she is both complicit in—and a victim of—an industry that has plenty of corrupt corners. We watch as she transforms into an advocate, finding power in collectivity and organizing. In recent years, Russell has become an outspoken advocate of the Me Too movement, as well as a champion for environmental causes.
Simultaneously, Russell makes it clear that every story, whether told through an image or the written word, is a story that depends on the dialogue between subject, author, and audience. “A photograph,” Russell writes, “which requires us to give something of ourselves up to the interpretation of another, makes it obvious that we belong to each other.”
Vogue spoke to Russell in early February about ambition, activism, and the frequently dismissed feminine labor of being agreeable.
**Vogue: **There are so many heartbreaking details that illuminate how little you were when you started modeling. Was it hard to access this younger self?
