RITES OF PASSAGE

‘I didn’t want to be president of the Dead and Dying Models Club,” Jenny Morgan says. “I saw the handwriting on the wall. A lot of girls in this town would just stay with it too long, trying to push that wall--time--out just a little further.”

It took Morgan, 35, almost six years to gather the courage to finally walk away from a successful career as a model. But the transition from the breezy life of high fashion and pampered beauty to a career as a corporate headhunter has not been emotionally easy. It’s been more than a year since her last photo session, but Morgan is still living in limbo, between the world that was and her life today.

“When I quit,” she says, “I had anxiety attacks. I came to a screeching halt. I didn’t think that I was qualified for anything. I literally had to dig my brain out of cobwebs.

“For so long, I had this luxurious lifestyle,” she says. “You travel around the world, work in places most people never see. You’re paid a lot of money for not doing a whole hell of a lot. But as you get older, fewer and fewer calls come in. You go from doing magazine and catalogue work to the runways and department store shows. You have to act a certain way to get jobs. At a certain age, it’s unbecoming.”

Morgan decided to do a 180-degree turn and get into the corporate world. She got a job recruiting lawyers for international firms. “It’s challenging,” she says. “I work in this very corporate world, where I have to dress like them and act like them. Sometimes I look at myself and ask, ‘Who is this?’ I miss the fluff and buff, being able to sleep in and then just get up and put makeup on. Sometimes, I’d kill to be able to get up on a runway again.”