Last week, Kate Upton wrote #MeToo on Twitter, saying Guess co-founder Paul Marciano “shouldn’t be allowed to use his power in the industry to sexually and emotionally harass women.”
What did she mean by that?
The supermodel alleges that during a 2010 Guess lingerie shoot, Marciano, now 65, aggressively kissed her, made several attempts to come up to her hotel room and forcibly grabbed her breasts. “After I pushed him away, he said, ‘I’m making sure they’re real,’ ” she recalled.
Photographer Yu Tsai told the magazine he witnessed the harassment Upton described.
After Upton denied Marciano, she says, she was fired. “Someone had called my agency to say I had gotten fat and would not be needed on set (that day). I was devastated, especially because at this point no one from Guess had even seen me,” Upton told Time.
She says the predatory behavior continued: After subsequently hiring her again, Marciano wrote her “dominant and possessive” messages, became furious that Upton wanted to bring her boyfriend to the Guess shoot, and fired Tsai, a move that seemed like retaliation after the photographer wouldn’t let Marciano stay in a room alone with Upton.
After rebuffing him during a 2011 shoot, Upton says Marciano called her “disgusting,” and spread lies about her being unprofessional and drunk on set. “I was then told to leave because Paul (Marciano) had said, ‘Get that fat pig off my set,’ ” Upton says.
A year later, after Upton was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Guess made a hefty $400,000 offer to have her shoot another campaign. But, Upton says, “Paul began texting that he would make sure to be on set. He told me that I wasn’t allowed to bring my boyfriend. I just couldn’t do it.”
The experience with Marciano had her thinking about quitting modeling, and it “took a huge toll on my confidence and self-worth,” she says. “I started slumping my shoulders to hide my breast size, wearing baggy clothes, started despising my own body.”
Upton told Time, “Nobody has a right over my body just because they view me as sexy or a sex icon. I think people need to be educated on the definition of consent. I don’t think there are any blurred lines in this. I don’t think you should be touching people at the workplace, and I don’t think you should be sexually speaking to a model as they’re doing their profession.”
Representatives for Guess have not responded to USA TODAY’s requests for comment.
Reuters reports Guess Inc shares fell more than 17% last week following Upton’s tweet accusing Marciano of using his power to harass women.
