The first time I set foot in a big Parisian hostess agency, I should have fled right away. At 27, I had just finished my school of communication and I was looking for a job in the intermittence of the show as a caster, without success. So I accepted this job as operations manager.
The first week, I was completely abandoned, I felt like an intern who was given nothing to do. I trained myself, on the job. No one told me I was going to take over the agency’s biggest client. Every morning, for this single piece, I had eighty people who texted me to let me know that they were taking their jobs. If people were missing, I had to be reactive and adapt by finding someone urgently. I also had to send employment contracts, manage administrative problems… I also did invoicing, a task that was not provided for in my job description. In addition to this large piece, I had a dozen files. And I also recruited the hostesses, according to very specific characteristics.
For example, for the VIP boxes at the Parc des Princes, I couldn’t invite just any hostess to take part. We used internal messaging groups that prioritized girls based on aesthetic criteria. In the booking [poste qui consiste à gérer un portefeuille de clients, à placer des hôtesses sur leurs événements et en assurer le bon déroulement]customers specify that they want “a person who looks good”. Implicitly, this means that they want blond, thin, tall, pretty hostesses.
Some women are de facto excluded
So we had five groups, ranging from 1 to 5. The first, which I call the “hotties” : all beautiful, tall, thin, who speak good English. In the second, there were girls who were pretty but small or who didn’t speak English well. In the third, even smaller girls and perhaps less in the canons of beauty, which were put on professional congresses. Finally, we put the remaining girls in the last groups, which were used for the distribution of leaflets.
A multitude of sizes 36 and 38, for a single size 40 and another in 42
When we receive new recruits, they have to go to the agency to pick up their uniform. From then on, discrimination begins since we often have a multitude of sizes 36 and 38, for a single size 40 and another in 42. Some women are excluded in fact. I happened to tell a girl I had booked that, in the end, I didn’t have an outfit in her size 42. I had to cancel her contract because of the grossophobia of the box, it was annoying.
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