Moss began modelling in the ‘80s at the age of 15, and by her late teens was travelling the world, far from her Canadian home, in a whirlwind of agency demands, fashion fads and dubious characters. With plenty of humour, buckets of pathos and smart, succinct writing Moss shows that being assigned one sex or the other at birth is only the tiniest part of what makes you a modern man or woman. It’s a sad truth that beauty and intelligence are often seen as mutually exclusive – but why? When did this errant way of thinking come about? And why do we do so little to challenge it? This is just the first of many fictions about women that Moss tackles in this autobiography-come-thesis. She is the first ‘legally verified’ author, having taken a lie detector test early on in her writing career to prove that she had not employed a ghost writer for her fiction. Moss has had to defend herself regularly against the assumption that being ‘conventionally attractive’ (as she, herself, calls it) negates the ability to speak intelligently on issues of importance.

“Surely this brave, articulate, intelligent woman isn’t just a model?” I caught myself thinking (I’m ashamed to say) – and I’m not the first. I was aware of her (let’s face, she stands out in a crowd) but I knew very little about her until I saw her standing her ground against politicians and bureaucrats on shows like Q & A, and standing up for people whose voices never make headlines via her work as a UNICEF ambassador for Child Survival. I’ve come late to the Tara Moss fan club.

The Fictional Woman by Tara Moss