Show Of Hands

Interesting profession:

Ashly Covington is the kind of top model who doesn't lift a finger. She doesn't cook, she doesn't clean and she avoids anything that could ruin her manicure.

But if your hands could earn $1,200 in a day, you'd think twice before scrubbing down the bathroom, too.

As one of the few full-time body parts models, Covington thinks about her hands "every minute of every hour of every day," because for the past seven years, her hands (and, occasionally, her legs and feet) have been her sole source of income. She can earn anywhere from $300 a day to a couple thousand per hour.

"Most people can walk away from work when they're done with a job, but parts models can't, because [our parts] have to be flawless. I moisturize 20 to 30 times a day, and wear gloves 90 percent of the time," she said. "When it's your livelihood, you've got to think hands first."

..."Some people have a very romanticized view of what [parts] modeling is," said Danielle Korwin, president of the New York City-based Parts Models modeling agency. "Their boyfriend or grandmother or mother has said, 'you have great hands, you should be a model,' but we want only the exceptional. Your hands have to be veinless, poreless and flawless."

...As a result, parts models have to do what seems like the near impossible: "Your hands have to convey emotion," Covington said, whose background in drama serves her well.

"I was doing a shoot where I had to pick up a cheeseburger and bring it to camera, but they wanted it to be the most delectable cheeseburger," Covington said. "So I said 'mmmm,' and really conveyed the emotion entirely to get it reflected in my hands."

Hand model James Furino, who's played the hands of famous leading men like Matthew Perry on "Friends" and Daniel Craig for a "James Bond" promotion, and has also landed print advertisements for clients like Smirnoff Vodka, said those gigs can be a lot of pressure.

"They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in pre-production and people are flying in all over the country so you can get to that exact moment where you split a muffin, and it's [on] you," he said.

Newcomer Jivelle Callender agreed that parts modeling for TV spots can be "nerve-wracking."

"You're standing in the middle of a large group of people who are very close on top of you, and the attention is fully focused on your hands," she said. "But your hands are not the star, the product is the star. Depending on what you're doing, some shoots are very involved -- dipping a shrimp, for example. It's one thing to just dip a shrimp, but it's quite another thing to do it on camera to make sure the shrimp looks spectacular."