A model (from Middle French modèle//aew), sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products (notably fashion clothing) or to serve as a subject of works of art.

Modelling ("modeling" in American) is distinguished from other types of public performance, such as an acting, dancing or mime artist, although the boundary is not well defined. Appearing in a movie or a play is almost never considered modelling.

Types of modelling include fashion, glamour, fitness, bikini, fine art, and body-part models. Models are featured in a variety of media formats including books, magazines, movies, newspapers, and TV. Models sometimes are featured in movies (Looker, Tattoo), reality television shows (America's Next Top Model, The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency), or music videos ("Freedom! '90", "Wicked Game", "Daughters").

A modelling agency is a company that represents a group of models which they call their model board. Model bookers (also called "bookers" or "agents") manage a model's career. Agents help a model find jobs, book jobs, give advice, and email or give copy books and comp cards to various clients they work with (a comp card is a selection of pictures printed on a card, a copy book is a scanned version of a models portfolio). Agents may send models to various clients and schedule modelling interviews (also called go and see or castings).^{[citation needed]}

A person is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood, the precise definition of which is the subject of much controversy.^{[vague language]} The common plural of "person", "people", is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), so the plural "persons" is often used in contexts which require precision such as philosophical and legal writing.

In ancient Rome, the word "persona" (Latin) or "prosopon" (πρόσωπον: Greek) originally referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play, while the masks themselves helped the actor's voice resonate and made it easier for the audience to hear.

In Roman law, the word "persona" became used to refer to a role played in court, and it became established that it was the role rather than the actor that could have rights, powers, and duties, because different individuals could assume the same roles, the rights, powers, and duties followed the role rather than the actor, and each individual could act in more than one role, each a different "person" in law.^{[tortured english][citation needed]}