ARISHIA.NET

Gem Stone is a story inspired by real events whilst Arishia lived in Los Angeles.

 

Gemma Stone is a beautiful and successful glamour and lingerie model from England, it's a tough life, but someone has to do it. At 24 she's already a house hold name in Europe, amongst any house which have men in it. Her success is due to both her looks and her ability to keep her head straight in a world where girls tend to take advantage of their looks and leak stories of their latest football player conquests to the Daily Mirror newspaper. However, despite her success in modelling, Gemma has had a passion for acting and performance since she starred in her community's Christmas play when she was 10.

Having conquered everything she wanted out of modelling, which wasn't much as she had little expectations to be as successful as she ended up being, Gemma relocated to Los Angeles in order to go to acting school to have some credibility behind her name.

 

Arishia, 26, has a very differing background, apart from the obvious one of being Australian, Arishia's parents are Iranian and her up bringing was centered more around academic and financial achievements. Growing up, Arishia stood out mainly for her many sarcastic comments and blatant truth telling in a dead pan tone which she used to make people who would try to put her down feel stupid. Her other accomplishments include her devotion to martial arts, mainly karate and kick boxing which she started in high school and turned into a job, despite her marketing degree and her parent's insistence that she pursue a more traditional career path and her older brothers' success as doctors. However, her aptitude for competitive fights and techniques allowed her to pursue a career in fitness as well as have the free time to write whenever she pleases. It also provides a safe back up should she fail, which is her biggest fear, so why even bother trying that hard?

 

Having lived in LA for almost a year, Gemma managed to convince Arishia, whom she met at film school in LA the previous year, to move over from Australia so that they could both try their hands in their respective entertainment career dreams. However, given that Arishia's dream to become a screenwriter is a little trickier than an already established model's, to become an actress, Arishia relies on her martial arts background and personal training qualifications to sustain a living in the health and fad conscious Los Angeles. Gemma maintains her living in LA by continuing to model for publications back home, which has allowed her to purchase an apartment in West Hollywood, and for Arishia to live in one of her bedrooms for a very cheap rent.

 

The two girls' friendship is easily maintained due to the fact that they are both fish out of water in LA. Their cultural similarities and similar sense of humour is a safety net and a defense mechanism to deal with how out of place they really are. When they are together, they correlate in a way which draws people toward them, or at least toward Gemma, they might stay though for Arishia's witticism, or more likely run in the opposite direction. When they're separate, they must face the cruel world (Hollywood) by themselves with all their differences as negatives as opposed to strengths. Gemma deals with the "stigma" of being seen as just a model or if not a model, as just a beautiful girl, believe it or not, it's hard to be looked at everywhere you go. Whereas Arishia bears the brunt of being invisible. She may have been marginally attractive back home, but this is LA, the standards and the ratings are not the same here. They both manage to create and maintain separate lives from each other, which they make sure to share the events of as they try to "analysis" their situations (which mimics more mocking one another or the people they have spent their time with).