Pageant News Bureau - Yvette Rifenberrick

Behind the glamour, modeling is a tough game. The prize looks so alluring, but the odds against success are so very long. Every career setback is a personal rejection.

Most women who try modeling drop out quickly if the breaks don't come their way. (There are plenty more young girls waiting to take their places.)

But some women just won't give up -- or perhaps they can't. As the months become years, they continue to go to auditions, to spend money on travel, clothes, pictures, and to wait for somebody to say "yes" instead of "no." They are like veteran prizefighters, proving they can still answer the bell.

Russet-haired Yvette Rifenberrick doesn't look anything like an old prizefighter. She's a pretty, 30ish housewife from Tennessee, friendly and talkative, down-to-earth. She has a slightly husky voice, the result of surgery some time back. It makes her sound just a bit sultry, like a B movie star of the 1940s. You can't help liking her.

But as a model and would-be actress, Ms. Rifenberrick just can't get out of the gate. She has paid for headshot after headshot, and sometimes she gets her husband to photograph her. She has put thousands of miles on her car attending auditions, some of them out of state. She has competed in swimsuit contests in noisy nightclubs when she wanted to be home in bed. Through it all, she has kept smiling.

People tell her she's cute, that there's something unique about her, and they're right. But that doesn't take her where she wants to go. She still doesn't get the gigs, and she still doesn't win the contests. The fact that thousands of other women face the same frustrations is not much comfort.

Ms. Rifenberrick has all the concerns of the average housewife -- financial obligations, health problems in the family, a lot of day-to-day responsibilities. She has been thinking often lately about saying goodbye to modeling altogether, getting back to "real life." Her loved ones hate to see her trying so hard without success.

But in her heart of hearts, Ms. Rifenberrick knows she's prettier than some models and actresses she has seen. She knows she's not lazy. She's sure there's a place for her somewhere in the entertainment business.

There ought to be a place, and maybe there is. But maybe there's not. Life isn't fair, and that goes double for the fame game.

At this point in her career, Yvette Rifenberrick, the likable lady from Tennessee, needs to make a few choices. Or she needs to catch a few breaks. Wish her well.

The struggle to be somebody