You Would Make a Great Model

Coco's first screen test was not what she thought it would be.

A female character is approached on the street, usually by an older man. He tells her that she would make a great model and he conveniently happens to be a professional photographer. He gives her his card and tells her to meet him at his studio, preferably alone or with an equally attractive female friend, and she sees absolutely nothing wrong with this. Unfortunately, his 'studio' turns out to be a rundown apartment, or worse, an empty warehouse. And now that she's alone...

Variations also include a female character who wants to dance or act being offered a chance for an audition. Another character often arrives at the last second to save her, but not always. The scammer may also intend to exploit the victim for money or other gain with nothing sexual involved, which is much closer to Truth in Television. See also Casting Couch, where there actually is a job opening available, but not for free.

No real life examples, please; reading stories of real people being assaulted and exploited would just be a serious downer.

Examples of You Would Make a Great Model include:

Anime and Manga

• Happens in Key the Metal Idol, to the very naive title character. Fortunately, the scumbags ordered delivery, and her friend Tomoko who brought the food figured out what was going on, and saved her.
• Happens to Anzu/Tea of Yu-Gi-Oh!, who is promised a chance to be a dancer like she's always wanted. In the original, Anzu was blackmailed to come to the gym under threat that the blackmailer would reveal her true age to her workplace and get her fired. The blackmailer was the gym teacher and wanted to videotape her body. In both versions, this leads to a Rescue Romance, as she fell in love with the Pharoah after he saved her from the pervert.
• Inverted in Great Teacher Onizuka - Tomoko thinks this is what's going to happen to her, but ends up getting discovered by a real talent agent.
• In one chapter of Keroro Gunsou, Tamama tries to discredit Angol Mois by posing as a sleazy camera man (with the help of a robotic exoskeleton) and telling her that she can become more "mature" by doing a photo shoot.
• In one Samurai Champloo episode, an artist offers to sketch Fuu and it turns out that he's aiding a sex slavery ring—he sketches women and people make "orders" based on the drawings and the models get kidnapped and sold. Fuu is rescued before anything bad can happen but presumably, this trope was played straight for the other women.
• Oonuma does this during her Heroic BSOD after finding out Utsumi is dating Shou in GE - Good Ending.
• Happens to Mima's character in Double Bind; the Show Within a Show in Perfect Blue. Apparently, modelling and stripping are synonymous.
• A variation of this occurs in Season 2 of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu. The main heroine, Haruka, is told by some modeling agents that she should participate in a beauty contest as a placeholder contestant. Unknown to her however, the agents really have her in mind to become the actual winner, and turn her into an actual model for their agency. The main protagonist, Yuuto, has to go through a lot to expose them, which at the end of the arc, causes the two agents to be Hoist By Their Own Petard when Haruka's exceedingly wealthy father buys out the agency, then promptly fires the two agents for their charade.

Comic Books

• Parodied in Superman: Metropolis Secret Files & Origins: Jimmy Olsen, of all people, tries this on Lex Luthor's Amazonian bodyguards when he meets them in the Planet's elevator. The next panel shows them exiting the elevator, leaving a semiconcious Jimmy behind them.
• A Wonder Woman/Batman graphic novel, The Hiketeia, involves a young woman whose sister was lured to Gotham city under the lure of this trope and quickly dragged into prostitution enforced by (forced) heroin addiction. The woman's vengeance against her sisters enslavers/killers leads her to asking for Wonder Woman's protection from Batman (since she had, y'know, murdered her sister's killers).

Film

• In The Movie of the Neil Simon play I Ought To Be In Pictures, shortly after her arrival in Hollywood Libby is approached by someone to make a "film," and she takes his card. Another girl tells her that they guy wanted her for a porno, and Libby replies "I know. It's just nice to be asked."
• Actually the plot to many a porn movie. Though reluctant, the woman will be dumb enough to take off all her clothes if asked. She apparently believes this will get her a tasteful nude modeling job, even as the "agent" acts like an obvious perv. Once she is naked, she will spontaneously forget that she's supposed to be there for a job and suddenly became more interested in having sex.
• In Draculas Daughter, the (ambiguously) Lesbian Vampire invites a pretty young girl to model for a portrait and then attacks her.
• The Girl in Gold Boots: Buz claims he can get Joanne a career as a dancer. The fact that Joanne wants to get away from her father is what ultimately convinces her to go with Buz. Surprisingly, Buz is being completely honest with Joanne, but she eventually finds out that her new employers are mobsters.
• In a film Human Trafficking (2005) The Big Bad has a model agency in East Europe. In a twist, the agency actually is a model agency (i. e. they do photoshoots for low-grade papers and such), with the main goal of it to launder the money got with said trafficking. However, many models still end up kidnapped and sold into prostitution.
• Occurs in Embrace Of The Vampire. The main character played by Alyssa Milano is picked up by an older (female) photography student. Taking photographs of her quickly turns into taking semi-nude photographs, after which the latter comes on to the former. She halts it when she realizes what is going on.
• Happens to Coco Hernandez in Fame, as seen in the image above.

Literature

• A depraved pimp in the Harlan Coben novel Gone For Good used this technique to drug, rape and prepare unsuspecting girls for prostitution. He got his retribution in the end, but how he recounted this was still pretty shocking.
• Happened to Whitney in the Ellen Hopkins novel Tricks. The "photographer" in question seemed like a really nice guy... until he got her addicted to heroin and started pimping her out for drug money.
• In the Miss Marple story The Body in the Library, this was how the murderers obtained one of their victims.
• This happens to Zoe in Saving Zoe, twice and she falls for it. Her friend's sleazy boyfriend claims that he will help her become an actress, and forces them to act in a porno. The second "photographer" actually approaches her on Myspace, and she goes to the man's house and is brutally murdered before the book starts.
• In Swedish novel Juliane och jag by Inger Edelfeldt, the main character's classmates gossip about this happening to one of their friends (though she gets away before the "photographer" has a chance to try anything).

Live-Action TV

• Occurs in an episode of Sister, Sister, when one of the girls goes to a "photographer's" apartment for a shoot. Luckily, the girls' parents arrive in time to save her.
• Fame. Coco is approached in a diner by a sleazy guy claiming to be a director. She goes to his apartment for a "screen test" and he orders her to undress in front of a camera. She does so, and starts crying from embarrassment and shame.
• The low-budget 80s anthology series Terrorvision had an episode where a couple of girls answer a modeling ad in a store window. No warehouse, just a small clothing store with a photo studio out back. Turns out the girls are actually modeling for mannequins.
• This was the tactic of the killer in the Criminal Minds episode "Fear and Loathing." Although he doesn't rape his victims. He records their voices as trophies and kills them by drugging and strangling them.
• In the Quantum Leap episode "Miss Deep South", an unscrupulous photographer talks a beauty pageant contestant into a "tasteful" photo shoot by promising that he can get her modeling work. Then he gets her drunk and persuades her to take off more clothing, reassuring, "I won't shoot anything that will embarrass you." The photos show up in a nudie calendar a few months later, ruining the girl's career (unless Sam can stop it from happening).
• In the series The Commish, there is an actual professional photographer who works for a couple of questionable papers which require shots of underage (though not child: ages 14–18) models. What many find too late: he also works for a child porn ring. The girl who used to babysit the Commissioner's son is among the victims...
• Played for Laughs in Black Books when it happens to Manny in the episode "He's Leaving Home".
• Power Rangers Ninja Storm: G-rated version in "Beauty and the Beach", when Marah and Kapri invite Tori to a photoshoot for a fake sports magazine in order to trap her and replace her with an evil duplicate.
• Subverted in the TV miniseries The 70s. A photographer approaches a young woman in a nightclub. After taking several legitimate pictures of her, he entices her to take her clothes off. Realizing his true motives, she flees in tears—but without anything happening to her.
• Part of the prologue to an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, where a serial killer would entice his victims this way.
• In the early UK run of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a scene suggestion that started out as simply 'a talent scout' is immediately taken in this direction by Mike McShane and Josie Lawrence.

Clive: [Do it in the style of] Pantomime.
Mike: Today's letter is 'C'! C is for Couch, as in Casting Couch!
Josie: The lady sits on the Couch!
Mike: And the agent takes off his Clothes! (frantic buzzing from Clive)

• In the ITV adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Body In The Library, one of the murdered girls is approached by a 'film director' who wants her to star in a movie. This is in fact an excuse to dye her hair and make her up to look like the other murdered girl. The girl only went along because the director was actually a woman, and she couldn't imagine a woman to be a danger to her.
• An episode of the 1990s TV version of The Untouchables involves one of the agents discovering his sister has fallen prey to this (with the same application of drugs-as-control used in the Wonder Woman/Batman example in the Comics section above).

Theatre

• Chicago: A Black and Grey Morality variant. The main character is sleeping with a man mainly because she thinks he's a producer who can help her career. He's not.

"Tell me I'm a star!"

Video Games

• This is a storylet in Alter Ego.
• A man on the streets of Betancuria offers to pay the Princess to pose for a nude painting in A Dance With Rogues. Should you accept, the bad guys show up and confiscate the painting, forcing you to sneak into their administration building to retrieve it.
• In Slave Maker, it's possible for your slave to meet a Brothel owner or a pimp or such this way while out on a walk, but she won't follow through with it until later, when you tell her to.
• In Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, your character is offered a job via someone else's phone as a model for a prosthetic maker in LA. His "studio" is in basement of another building, and filled with cages, containing other "models", most with missing limbs.
• Tanaka, the Devil Social Link in Persona 3, pulls the "scamming for money" variant on the Player Character, stringing it out until the protagonist has shelled out 40,000 yen before finally admitting that there's no such opportunity. Naturally, falling for the scam is the only way to begin his Social Link.

Webcomics

• This Subnormality strip, which does feature a deserted warehouse. The girl in question is turned into a figurine for the Franklin Mint.

Western Animation

• An episode of All Grown Up! has Suzie meet a woman who offers her a chance to audition to be a singer. The only catch is, she has to pay a fee for a studio session in advance. When she shows up to the "studio" it turns out just to be an office building.