Jeana Turner: Lessons From An 8-Year Journey to Overnight Success
12 min. Read | Editorial | A.M.
STYLED BY ERICA MER
MAKEUP BY FARA CONLEY
WARDROBE BY SCHAI Throughout
FOOTWEAR BY UNITED NUDE
STORY & PHOTOGRAPHY BY A.M.
Originally published in The January Issue, 2020.
The magazine hit the table’s surface with a sharp slap, the page opened to a Dove ad featuring a tastefully nude model reinforcing body positivity. “Would you do this?” they asked with a cautiously disdainful tone.
They were the picture of conservative America, holding both familial and financial weight over the conversation’s outcome. Jeana’s grandparents had adopted her mother, watching as she struggled through years of drug addiction and prostitution. Jeana herself went through the foster system when she was five—the same time her alopecia began to manifest itself. Life was harsh, with tough lessons doled out too early for Jeana to grasp. On the surface, it’s understandable why her grandparents reacted so severely to her interest in modeling.
Yet she mustered the courage to share her twelve-year-old truth with them. “Honestly, not at the moment. But I don’t see anything wrong with it. And when I’m eighteen or nineteen, yeah, I would.” With that, her grandparents withdrew their support. If she was was to pursue modeling at all, it would be on her own. A lesson she would never forget.
Fast-forward to 2012. Jeana sits alone in an apartment that was fully in her name. She had amassed a list of accomplishments. She was a nineteen-year-old-double-major in Photography and Fine Art Drawing. She was a celebrated member of her high school dance team the year they won a championship. She was highly functional, navigating years of stress, hair loss, anxiety and tumult. And she had even gained some experience in front of the camera modeling swimwear, lingerie, and fitness for regional amateur photographers. But an unease existed in the back of her mind, like a piano playing only dissonant notes in the place of a melody.
“When you’re first starting in this industry, it’s confusing. So I was just shooting with as many people as I could just to get the experience of being in front of the camera. And I did that for a few months and realized, Okay, this is not making me money. I was really stressed out and I couldn’t figure how to make the market work for me. I had no guidance and didn’t know where to go. It just wasn’t working.”
While her academic studies seemed to be in alignment with her modeling aspirations, she experienced friction that halted her progress.
“I was nearly failing my major classes and I was acing biology and everything else that I didn’t go to school for, which is what messed with my head. And it was all because someone’s creative vision didn’t line up with mine.”
Jeana was greatly influenced by Mert & Marcus, Mario Testino, and many other commercially successful photographers. Her professors were not. Losing her desire to convince them otherwise, she looked for other areas in which to excel. But she had run out of time, money, and options, and decided she couldn’t ask her family for support. After resigning herself to dropping out of college and breaking her lease, she curled into a ball on her couch and cried herself to sleep.
She awoke the next morning to find something entirely unexpected. If ever there was a sign from the universe, she thought, this was it. She peered closely at an email from a casting director inviting her to model for Playboy. But even more surprising was her reaction.
“I remember waking up and being like, This is a dream, there’s no way. And that may not have been the big door to open for me, but it was that one little spark of hope at that time. And I remember having that conversation as a kid with my family about whether or not I would even do modeling. But this isn’t a Dove ad. This is Playboy. And it is naked.”
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Jeana’s first modeling opportunity was for Hair Club for Kids when she was eleven. Her alopecia had returned in full effect, leaving only patches of hair that would fall out without warning. Kids at school were predictably unkind. Jeana was made to feel like an outsider more than she had felt already. But wearing her wig made her feel like she could become anyone, slipping in and out of everyday situations effortlessly. A powerful feeling at a time when power was rarely afforded.
Yet there she sat, rendered powerless, reminded of all the reasons why success was out of reach, now staring at an invitation to appear in a publication that represented an image of femininity to which so much of the nation aspired.
Jeana modeling for Hair Club for Kids, age 11.
“I remember feeling contrived in general about my wig. I wasn’t to the point where I felt like I wanted to talk to people about it. But I was at the point where I felt like it was time for me to be vulnerable with who I am as a person. And if the place to start is with my body, then I’m gonna do Playboy to grow into my own femininity.”
So she jumped at the opportunity, chose a wig, created a character, and took the next bold step toward becoming the person she is today. And while her anxieties weren’t alleviated— and nothing could prepare her for the backlash her decision would bring, even now—her experience grounded and balanced her perspective in ways few can appreciate without experiencing it for themselves.
“Everybody wants to gawk at me, or lift me up as a hero that has so much impact on the alopecia community. But then they sit there and shade or slight or slam the fact that I’ve done Playboy amidst all of it. And it’s hurtful because doing all of those things is what led me to be able to be this person before you now, regardless of my choices in the past. But it really builds you into being a strong person, to be able to see this entire picture from both ends—a super sexy girl with curves and hair, and then I’ve also been the really weird skinny girl with no fucking hair that almost looks like a boy. And everything in between. And it’s given me a life experience that I think most girls don’t get because they are one or the other, or feel forced to have to choose.”
Jeana had built a sizable following around her newfound sex appeal. But while her reputation grew in status, her creativity grew stagnant. She felt artistically trapped. And with every new inquiry she received, she felt further away from her calling toward fashion.
“My idea of being a model was what I’m doing right now—being on sets, being used as a complete canvas and turned into these characters—everything that I’m experiencing right now. And then after Playboy, everything was just so sexy all the time. I wouldn’t get booked for anything that I’m doing now. No one would have ever looked at me that way. But it definitely just made me feel like all I could do was swimwear, lingerie and nude because those were the only things that came to me.”
Jeana modeling for Playboy, May 2017.
Jeana attended numerous castings for commercial and editorial work, met with casting directors in various markets, and showed her work to agencies and other professionals. All met with the same warm receptions and dead ends. She found a gold mine in glamour modeling, but no creative voice. And no alternatives.
“All my pictures from that time look the same. There’s no creative concepts behind them. Some are terrible images and we won’t talk about those. But even the ones that are good, there’s no story behind it. You can’t really see much through the picture besides what it is, and it’s a sexy girl. I had that image for so long that it took so much to break that. And I’m still breaking that. I’m not sure if that battle will ever be done. But I’m still fighting.”
Jeana moved to Las Vegas and began developing a word-of-mouth network of creative professionals. She tried to rebuild her book with a new creative direction, but found increasing unease at home.
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“Our personal life has a lot to do with our professional life, whether we want it to or not. At the time when I was dealing with a lot of really bad, anxious stressors, I was in a really bad relationship. Not physically abusive or anything like that. It was just very stressful. There was no communication. I didn’t feel heard, ever.”
Jeana lived with anxiety for as long as she could remember. Modeling was the one place she could exchange that anxiety for control. But she was having her professional image shaped by others in ways that took her where she didn’t want to go, and found that disempowerment too great to overcome. Yet her followers heard her, and looked up to her. They saw something within her then what we clearly see now.
“I have a lot of people who will ask me, How do I do this? They want to be models but they have shitty boyfriends in their life. And women put weight in their significant others. And if that’s a negative aspect for you, it’s always going to cause anxiety. So until you actively make an effort to change those things for yourself, anxiety is not going to just go away. Not everybody needs to be in a relationship to be successful. And an intimate relationship doesn’t just mean your partner. An intimate relationship is someone you share vulnerable feelings with that you wouldn’t share with the rest of the public. And if those relationships are tainted by anxiety and stressors, it absolutely will carry over into your work. So it’s about having a really peaceful home life to be honest. That makes everything a lot easier.”
In 2016, Jeana decided she needed a change. She enrolled in esthetician courses and pursued a life in service to revealing the beauty in others.
“Most people have that relationship with their nail tech, hair stylist—the ones who make them feel beautiful. So there’s an element of trust involved. And for me, that was my opportunity to be able to talk about my hair. I’ve been making my own wigs for myself since I was fourteen or fifteen years old. And that was one of the first places I was able to openly talk to a student body. Alopecia was in our textbooks, so it was a very normal thing. They thought it was so fuckin’ cool. And they also gave me the comfort to change my hair and come to school with different wigs. That’s when I started implementing different wigs in my career. I was still modeling on the side.”
Jeana had gradually transformed her brand identity from one of overt sexuality to one of editorial storytelling. And the payoff was evident in her book, which began to resemble the creativity, storytelling, and brand identity she longed to achieve as a photography major in college.
“In the beginning, so many people just want to be known. But you have to be known for something. And that’s actually the mistake I made. I was just like, I can creatively do a million things. But people don’t want to hear that. They want to know that one thing you’re amazing at. Not that you can’t do the rest. But there’s that one thing that makes you special or that really draws people’s attention into you as a person. It’s about finding that one thing.”
Though Jeana finally found acceptance, encouragement, and meaning as a new esthetician-in- training, an atomic bomb was dropped into her lap, and she felt no choice but to go with it. After nail-biting trials, Jeana was finally invited to participate in America’s Next Top Model Cycle 24 where she would appear on national television before her childhood idol and compete for the chance to walk the world’s runways and appear in international fashion campaigns. It would be the validation that made her years of struggle worth every setback and indignity. So she seized the opportunity before her with great courage, and the rest is history.
While success means many things to many people, for Jeana, it can be quantified by the quality of the relationships one has in their life. All the fame in the world means little without that.
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“I think there are people who are in this industry who are good at what they’re doing, but are in it for the fun and the play. And there’s people who are in it because this is their passion, and they’re great at what they do, and they don’t care to dabble their personal lives into the thing that they’re good at. They don’t care that you can go to a party with cocaine every night. Those things are always there, but there’s people who act on it and those who don’t.”
“Trust is a major key, especially when you’re dating someone in the entertainment industry. Even if you’re both in the entertainment industry, it doesn’t mean that you’re both going to understand each other’s elements of entertainment. And when you’re in two different avenues, you have to learn things. What’s socially acceptable and what’s not. But you also have to trust that the other person is conducting themselves in a way that’s proper to you, because you are exposed to a lot of celebrities and things that other people might be enamored with. So you just have to be able to trust that the person you’re committed to is on the same page with you at all times.”
“People have styles nowadays, but people generally don’t have a signature style. For the most part, everyone’s very keen on being diverse and changing things up, rather than making their work obviously different. Unfortunately, several photographers that I was very motivated by ended up on the #MeToo list. So it makes me view them differently as a person. But there’s more female photographers becoming successful. And it’s really cool to see the difference in perspective. And you can tell the difference. All my Playboy editorials were shot by a female photographer. And I’ve shot similar concepts with male photographers, and the intention for the picture comes across differently. It’s a subconscious thing, not that it should matter, but it does matter. I definitely think there’s a different creative view that’s coming from female artists right now.”
Looking forward, Jeana remains grateful for the path she has taken, and has renewed her focus on elevating her own modeling carer and the careers of others. While no two paths are identical, there is strength in sharing the wisdom gained from her experiences that can make all the difference in the lives of those following in her footsteps.
“There is no step-by-step when it comes to modeling. All you can do is learn you and figure out you. And that’s where it all starts. I know I went through hell and back trying to figure out who I am. And I may not have the answers for everybody. But I can at least go through the journey with you and give you what I know. And you can run with it how you please.”