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“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?
Cameron Russell: It didn t feel hard to access it…One of the things that was sort of a surprise to me was feeling like the things that my mom had tried to equip me with—like to be really strong, to be confident, to be assertive, to be independent, to be resilient—when I started working in fashion, they actually made me really, really good at being acquiescent, at being flexible, at being agreeable. Those skills made me able to assimilate to this culture, and to always try to maintain some level of distance. My mom tried to prepare me for a world where frequently girls are treated as less than, and also made me able to swim in that water for a long time.
You say that “ambition was a pact” between you and your mother, who was a successful entrepreneur and the founder of ZipCar. How did inheriting her ambition shape you?
The real gift that my mom gave me is that she always took me very, very seriously. And she took the world very seriously. In the beginning, I think the way that I understood ambition as a 16-year-old was: How can I be really successful inside this opportunity, inside this industry, which just fell in my lap? By the end of the book, I think the evolution of that ambition is, How do I take my job seriously? How do I take this industry seriously?...I started this book many, many years ago…And so it s funny to publish it right now [when] that question feels so timely.
You write, “I wonder if the reason why I’ve been saying I’m going to be president all these years is because I want to be treated like someone who might be president.” Did this aspiration protect you?
What I was thinking about was that search for a very particular type of power. I think there s a really helpful understanding of power, which is “power over” versus “power with.” …“Power over” can be traditional, like the presidency or finding success in a system that privileges some and exploits many, many others. I think we have to unlearn the way that we ve been taught history is dependent on this one changemaker, this one powerful dude who made everything possible. Because, of course, actually the real way change is made is always “power with.” There is, in fact, no other way to make change.
Having re-conceptualized what it means to you, do you feel powerful in your daily life?
One of the things that has delighted me about organizing—and organizing inside my own industry and outside the industry—is over and over again finding how many people want to show up for something different. In the moments that I have been the most outspoken voice for my profession, behind the scenes there have always been a huge group of people who are like, ‘Keep going.’ The reason that I was able to [advocate] is because I felt really, really held…Everybody accepts this criticism of fashion, like, Yep. It s super exploitative. But despite that super extractive nature of this industry, organizing has come from inside this industry, and has won us our most cherished democratic freedoms and worker protections. As an individual working in the industry, [I see that] there s a constellation of folks who are like, ‘Wait, first of all, we could do what s happening way, way better?’ And, second of all, ‘What fashion is can be culture, can be community, can be a critically needed imaginative space.’
The theme of women making things resurfaces throughout the book. Can you speak to how “craft” can be quietly elevated to a form of resistance?
I think the fact that women s cultural practice, women s art practice, has often been seen as craft, has rarely been allowed to rise in the ranks of art industry and fashion industry is a really big blessing because it gives us this roadmap for what is beyond. What do we do beyond capitalism?...Making clothes has to do with care: caring for the people around us, finding ways to build solidarity, and hold history. In my own family, my mom is this avid knitter. I have so many sweaters at my house for every age, zero to 99. And when I wear them, sometimes I feel hot and itchy, but mostly I feel warm and I feel like there is something in this garment that is so suffused with love and care and joy and playfulness and sometimes total silliness… [I started] to make quilts myself and [realized] there is something about quilting that was just a brilliant metaphor for this moment, which is that when something is worn beyond repair, a quilt allows you to take that thing and turn it into a new thing, a completely other thing.
Did you always intend to write frankly about your complicity in the fashion industry? Or did that evolve as you revised?
I think that was always there. Being able to facilitate and encourage change requires the ability to hold both complicity and the way that the system is not serving us. Agreeability actually is a very important skill…[and it] is frequently dismissed as unskilled feminine labor. We can use that skill to bring folks together, to push through conflict, and challenge things that don t work without pushing people unnecessarily away. That agreeability, as it evolves in this book, is really trying to think about grace. Sometimes grace is an expectation. And, unfortunately, it s mostly girls who are forced to learn it. But seeing it as a skill and seeing it as a tool for opening up collaboration and building trust in a moment where there s just not enough of that. Where does complicity land? [I think it is] holding that more…skilled type of grace.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone: A Memoir is out from Penguin Random House on March 19.