‘It Helps to Smile’

Tana Oliver’s favorite model is Cindy Crawford. “I like her look and her personality,” says the 15-year-old. “She seems really together and smart.”

And if the high school junior could control the future, she’d be next in line when Crawford abdicates her supermodel throne.

But since that won’t happen any time soon, Oliver has enrolled in the 10-week Basic Self-Development and Modeling class at the John Robert Powers school in Thousand Oaks. Just to up her chances.

She’s here on a windy Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. with four other teens and a 25-year-old woman for three hours of What Aspiring Models Need to Know. Tonight’s agenda: how to clean and moisturize your face, how to give yourself a manicure and how to walk down a runway.

Hope is what keeps this school alive. Although the odds are against most of these girls and women winding up on the cover of Elle, within these walls that doesn’t seem to matter. Even those who are 5-foot-2 and a little on the hippy side really believe they have a decent shot at modeling.

And there’s more to be learned here than how to push back your cuticles. What the students at John Robert Powers get is a cross between charm school and assertiveness training.

“Now who has worked on her goals?” asks teacher Laurie Lin. She conducts class in a fluorescent-lighted room where the walls are covered with elaborate, manic collages of models.

A girl wearing cowboy boots raises her hand.

“I wanted a job, and I got one at McDonald’s.”

“Good!” Lin says. “Who else?”

“I got an ‘A’ on that test,” says another girl, with a flip of her hair.

“Goals are important,” Lin reminds them. “And they give you something to look forward to.”

Julie Covarrubias has waited 13 years to complete her goal. The 25-year-old, who is petite, with long, dark straight hair, works as an office manager for a jewelry store in Oxnard. She confesses that she always wanted to take modeling classes, but her parents couldn’t afford the fee when she was a teen-ager. (Today, various Powers classes range from $500 to $800 per session.)

“Sometimes people ask if I’m a model,” she adds, “people on the street, my co-workers. When I say no, they say, ‘You should be a model.’ And I figure if I don’t make it big, be the next Cindy Crawford, at least I get the experience and the education. . . . I’ll do whatever it takes. I’d like to feel like I’ve accomplished something in my life besides working every day. I’d just like to add a little spice to my life.”

Lin switches to skin care.

“Now what happens when you don’t get enough sleep?” she asks.

“Ummm. . . . You get wrinkles?”

“And zits?”

“That’s right,” Lin says. “I’ve heard that some girls get really poofy skin. How many of you wear foundation?”

Two out of five raise their hands.

“My dad complains about my makeup,” says one girl. “He says I look like a ghost.”

“I’ll tell you something,” says Lin, “most boys don’t like a lot of makeup.”

“Girls at my high school wear eyeliner out to here ,” says the hair-flip girl, drawing a line with her finger from her eye to her temple.

The models-in-training relish the application of moisturizer, eye cream and, finally, concealer in little dots under their eyes, although at this age there is precious little to conceal.

Foundation is applied with makeup sponges, dabs of “Nude Pink” stroked in downward motions. Bright lipstick is last, and the girls look at each other and giggle at what feels like a ton of makeup.

Faces done, it’s time to practice the model runway walk. With bouncy Top 40 music emanating from a boom box, the girls stride down the linoleum, stop, do a turn, walk, stop, do a half-turn and walk back.

Their gait is stiff, uncertain; their eyes are cast toward the floor, silently counting the number of steps.

“It helps to smile!” Lin says.

It’s not a real runway, of course, and there aren’t hordes of photographers at their feet shooting every turn, every look. Most of these girls haven’t even seen agents, haven’t experienced the agony of being rejected on looks alone.

But for a few minutes they hold center stage, and the spotlight is real.

“All my girlfriends want to do this,” Oliver says. “They think it’d be really fun.”

Two days later, another basic modeling class meets, this one with about 10 people ranging in age from 13 to 30.

Tonight’s topics: how to coordinate accessories and how to conduct yourself during a job interview.

A tall girl in a blue leotard and baggy jeans relates her frustrations over applying for a job as a salesgirl at a discount clothing store.

“She’s all, ‘I’ll call you back,’ and she never called me.”

Lin replies: “There are ways to sell yourself. You can say, ‘I really want the job, and I’ll work as hard as an 18-year-old. I’ll prove myself.’ People in the business like to see that you’re a go-getter.”

After a break, the girls practice the runway walk, switching from sneakers to high-heeled pumps that look incongruous with cutoff jeans. They’re rehearsing for graduation, when they’ll stride down the runway in formal attire.

Standing before the class, one girl says, “My name is Veronica Esquivel, and I want to be a model.” Although she says she’s nervous in front of people, she does her walk and turns.

“They teach us to have confidence in ourselves,” says Esquivel, who at 15 is long-legged and thin, with strong, angular features. “And they tell us that no matter what people tell us, like modeling agents, if they put us down, we have to keep on going for our goals. . . . I never learn this stuff at home or at school. I’m the oldest in my family, and my mom isn’t really into makeup that much.”

Esquivel, a student at Channel Island High School in Oxnard, adds, “I’ve always wanted to be a model. I thought it would be really fun, and you’d get paid good for having fun, taking pictures and going all over.”

She, too, admires Cindy Crawford. “I guess she’s real big. We all dream of being like her.”

When Tana Oliver, who attends Buena High School in Ventura, stops to think about the competition, sometimes she gets scared. “But it also seems fun,” she says.

“I needed to build up some self-confidence. The class has really helped me a lot, just being open with people, being able to talk to people. . . . I’ve been really, really shy because my brother’s always been in the spotlight.”

She reveals that her boyfriend of a year and a month isn’t all that thrilled with her modeling aspirations.

“He thinks I’m going to be some famous model, and he wants me all to himself. He’s very jealous.”

So what does Oliver say when he tells her this?

“I tell him to shut up; I’ll do my own thing.”

Looks like those classes are paying off.