An Interview with Hand Model Ellen Sirot, One of the Industry's Top Models

To Keep Her Skin Pristine, This Top Parts Model Won't Cook, Schlep Garbage or Go Out Ungloved

American Express. Avon. McDonalds. Neutrogena. Pampers. Panasonic. Sprint. Tums.

You've seen Ellen Sirot advertise all of these products and companies, though you'd never know it.

Sirot, 37, is a top parts model: she specializes in showing off her hands, feet and legs. Earning anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars a day working for TV and magazine ads, she is a supermodel in a competitive field most people have never heard of.

"My hands are really beautiful," Sirot said in a recent interview. "They're an amazing work of art. Pure porcelain. They're like a newborn kitten, they're so soft."

Parts Models, a New York City agency, represents Sirot and more than 100 other men and women. Former model Dani Korwin founded the company in 1986, and takes credit for discovering the niche: no other agencies were representing parts models then, she said.

"You have to make a conscientious effort to take care of the body part," Korwin said. "If you're a foot model, you can't wear flip-flops, in the event that you may stub a toe. This is part of the downside of parts modeling."

Sirot's hands, for example, have not seen the sun for 15 years, she said. She owns over 500 pairs of gloves and rarely takes them off, except to moisturize her hands some 20 times a day. She does not cook, clean or take out the garbage, because even a minor paper cut could cost her weeks of work. Wine glasses shatter in her nightmares.

"I started as a normal person," she said. "But now I'm an obsessive hand model."

Obsession is part of the job description, at least for female parts models. But the same techniques that keep a woman's hands pristine "would be a little weird for men's hands," said male hand model Jimmy Furino.

"My hands are manicured, but they don't look like mannequin hands," Furino said. "I go to the gym, I get calluses, and my hand looks like a man's."

Furino, 47, usually works with Sirot when an ad calls for a couple - to promote jewelry, for example.