Switching Goals by Alex Morgan

Author:Alex Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Chapter Nine

That night, I started to get a little nervous about my photo shoot the next day after school. I guess I had done a decent job, or Ashanta wouldn’t have offered me another one. But I definitely hadn’t been in my comfort zone the first time. The soccer field was where I felt confident. At the last shoot, I got to pretend to be playing soccer. That helped me feel more comfortable. If I didn’t have that going for me at this shoot, would I be a complete disaster?

After I finished my homework, I started to think about soccer versus modeling. Why did I feel so much more comfortable on the soccer field? Maybe natural talent was part of it. But also, I practiced my butt off, so I was prepared. Do models practice too? I wondered.

At the photo shoot, I’d had trouble smiling naturally. Zane had even told me that I looked like I was grimacing. So I decided I could practice smiling—although I had no idea how to do that!

I stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door and gave a big smile. My eyes were wide and popping out of my head, and you could see every single tooth in my mouth. I didn’t look happy at all.

I shook my head. No good. And I felt really silly. While I never felt silly playing soccer, sometimes I wanted to learn new techniques, and there were a lot of great tutorials online. Maybe there was the same for modeling?

So I opened my laptop and found a bunch of tutorials about how to smile like a model. I watched a ton of videos and then tried out the techniques. One of them was to close your eyes and take a few relaxing deep breaths before opening your eyes and smiling. The other was to relax your jaw and face muscles, which at first I did too much, and my face looked droopy. I also tried a technique that said to pretend someone you really liked was behind the camera, so I pictured Kara encouraging me, and that seemed to help.

I tried a closed-mouth smile, a partly-opened mouth smile, and smiling with my hands on my hips. Then I smiled while I tossed my hair over my shoulders and almost cracked myself up when I saw myself in the mirror.

I even practiced something called smizing, which is when you “smile with your eyes” instead of with your mouth. I widened my eyes, I wiggled my eyebrows, I narrowed my eyes, and I cracked up again. I still looked ridiculous!

But I didn’t give up. I practiced smiling until my cheeks hurt. I flopped onto my bed, exhausted, while I massaged my face with my hands. Could you sprain your cheeks like you could sprain your ankle? Who knew modeling could be so dangerous!

Even though it felt super weird spending all that time looking at myself in the mirror while I practiced smiling, it definitely helped me feel less self-conscious.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.