The Price of Being First'

This winter, I made modeling history. Then the internet made me wish I hadn't.

- Paloma Elsesser

ON THE AFTERNOON OF DECEMBER 3, I was on my hands and knees at the Sunset Tower Hotel, praying. It was the day before the Fashion Awards, an annual event put on by the British Fashion Council that honors designers, models, and others—I was up for Model of the Year. Yet all day, I had been making silent pleas not to win.

Please, God, don’t let me win this award, I prayed. I simply do not have the capacity.

When I was 22, studying psychology and literature at the New School, makeup artist Pat McGrath saw me on Instagram and someone from her team sent me an email that would change my life. I started modeling, and in the nine years since, I’ve achieved things I’m deeply proud of: appearing on the covers of American and British Vogue (a few times!), walking runways worldwide, buying a home, even releasing a book. Yet, amid these milestones, I have been afraid of feeling found out. Constantly self-editing, trying to find my balance between tender self-acceptance and unbridled self-hatred. Each victory for representation comes with a new flood of vitriol and a new wave of doubt: Maybe they’re right; maybe I don’t deserve to be here at all.