Photo Credit: Instagram/noelani_thefaceaustralia
Neolani Petero appeared on an episode of “The face Australia” and from there, her image has been going viral since then. “The face Australia” was an Australian reality television modelling competition series.
This series follows three supermodel coaches, Cheyenne Tozzi, Naomi Campbell, and Nicole Trunfio as they compete with each other to find 'the face' of Fresh Effects, Olay. The series premiered on 18 March 2014, on Fox8. Applicants who were 18 years and above, below 30 years and a height of 172 cm were considered for the show.
Neolani Petero is now exposing the dark side of Naomi Campbell's reality show, “The face.” The model, whose viral moments on the show made her an internet sensation, recently spoke out about her harrowing experience. According to her, the glamorous exterior of “The Face” concealed a much darker reality. In as much as the contestants were promised fruitful careers, Petero claims that the experience was far from glamorous.
According to her, she “was manipulated by producers seconds before going on, coerced in the journal parts the next day. Starved, left in the cold, and almost fainted earlier in the day with zero duty of care. I won the runway challenge, but it never aired.”
Neolani Petero went ahead to say that her experiences in the show negatively impacted her mental health. “I went into psychosis, was hospitalized, wanted my life to end, and was homeless due to my state of mental health,” she said. “I have a permanent mental injury from this trauma. I’ve worked my a** off to rebuild my life since advocating for BI and POC folk in my industry.” Petero went ahead to say that how she was portrayed in the show negatively impacted her modeling career and that the online popularity destroyed her mental health.
Petero alleges that the producers used extreme tactics to control and manipulate the contestants, pushing them beyond their physical and emotional limits. In as much as many people sympathized with what Neolani encountered, some were not surprised since the modelling industry has been exposed numerous times for neglecting and mistreating their models, something that leads to mental health issues. “Wishing you all well chasing your dreams without toxic people around you,” she concluded.
