When she’s home, Jenna DeLuca wears socks, not shoes, to avoid getting calluses. She won’t cook for fear of being burned. And dishes are done only while wearing rubber gloves.
“The silliest things get to you. I spilled hot coffee on my hand once and burst into tears. Not really because it was hot but because [my hands are] so important,” she says, holding up 10 perfectly manicured nails.
DeLuca is one of Chicago’s fashion celebrities. You’ve seen her in catalogs and magazines, on billboards and posters selling everything from vacuums and cell phones to strappy sandals and toe rings.
At least you’ve seen parts of her.
As a model for hands and feet, DeLuca doesn’t always get her face in highly visible shots. And that’s just fine with her.
She and other Chicago-area models enjoy the strange world of body-part modeling because it pays well–up to $175 an hour–while allowing time to pursue other interests.
DeLuca, 28, is studying to be an actress. But it’s her hands that are gaining the spotlight for now–they’re even being featured in an upcoming issue of Playboy.
“Oh! I’ll be modeling a Playboy watch,” she giggles when eyebrows raise.
The fingers of Lori Pigeon, 30, who also does full-body modeling and teaches modeling classes, graced posters across the city as a dying Desdemona for Lyric Opera’s 2001 production of Othello. And Brenda Burns-Swibes, 39, known by agencies and other models as Chicago’s leading hands model, also gained fame with her legs in a Donna Karan pantyhose ad.
When your hands or feet are your meal-ticket, keeping them in shape is a 24/7 job. There is a constant slathering of lotions–at least half a dozen times a day on hands, and on feet at night. “I get regular manicures and moisturize all the time,” says Brian Boden, a 45-year-old Chicago writer and producer who works as a hand model on the side. “You don’t want to have hang nails or crusty cuticles when you get a call” to be photographed.
“Very few [full-body] models have great hands or brilliant feet,” says Wade Childress, director of commercial/print at Stewart Talent who works with Elite Modeling Management in Chicago. In the “parts” business for 15 years, he knows what it takes. For hands, he studies lines on fingers and palms, which helps him determine how the hands will age, and looks for straight, long fingers and nails that don’t have ridges, stripes or bumps. The same goes for toes and toenails: straight toes and no calluses.
In the 1980s, when Burns-Swibes started modeling, “photos were touched up. It got to be pretty expensive. Now, everything is digital. You can do anything,” she says of digital cameras that can eliminate cottage cheese thighs from photos. Still, that didn’t keep her in the leg business.
“After two kids, I got spider veins. After the third, I decided it was too hard to compete with 20-year-olds. So I stick to hands.”
But Burns-Swibes says she has had to give up a lot of things she would like to do with her kids for hand modeling. “I’d like to go out and throw a ball with them. But I can’t. My daughter’s on a volleyball team and I’d like to go out with her but I can’t take the chance.
“It’s always in the back of your mind,” she says. “The littlest thing could chip a nail or scratch your skin. I’m always thinking about what I’m doing with my hands.”
The hardest part of the job comes on the day of the photo shoot, when models avoid anything that can indent a body part. Pigeon wears gloves or seamless furry boots without socks, or flip-flops so her feet and toes don’t get creased. She carries a bag with a department-store shelf of creams, cover-ups and nail polishes. “One time they asked for my nails to be green,” she said. “It can be really ridiculous. You just try not to let it take over your life.”
During a shoot, models are known to hold their hands above their heads until it’s time to snap the picture to keep blood from discoloring their skin. The same goes for feet. Between shots for a toe-ring ad, DeLuca surprised the photographer when she brought her knee to her nose to avoid blood rushing into veins and making them more noticeable.
And Burns-Swibes recalls one of her most difficult hand shoots–an international 7-UP TV commercial that required her to be submerged in a tank while her hand, pushing a pop can through the surface, was showered with ice cubes. “It was freezing. I had to be underwater and bring my hand up just right,” she said.
And then there was the pickle commercial that required her hands to be up in the air holding a jar and her head bent to her chest so there was enough room for the camera to get the right angle. “You become a contortionist,” Burns-Swibes says. “And even if you get one take right, you have to do it again and again. You can’t go home until you get two takes. It can take forever.”
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