Modeling for Teens....

Okay, this is the post that I have been dreading the most. The Baby post had me sweating...This one gave me an eye twitch. We get more calls from and about teens than any other kind of call. Do I have something against teens? Absolutely NOT. Teenagers are fascinating; you can take a huge cross section of them and not find two that are remotely alike only to discover that half of them are best friends....They are often the most accepting and the least accepting....They can be innocent and at the same time sage. (Yes- sage. Do you know who the lead singer of the Greenday is? See? That counts for wisdom in some circles)

Alright, I have stalled long enough. Here is the deal with Teens and modeling: It is just like baby modeling except they are taller. Seriously. If you live in a small city and there are no industries that have their headquarters in your city (here is that reference again) then there is no place for teens to model. (The hinky part is if you tell a 15 month old they can't model the repercussions aren't as grave as telling a 15 year old the same thing- go figure)

So here it is again: Teens are cast for ads like clothing make up and hair care products. If there is no department store headquartered where you live, then they won't cast for catalog models there. All the big make up companies find their models in NY and LA or use celebs. (See, even the big time models have competition! Doesn't that warm the cockels of your heart...Whatever a cockle is)
The thing that makes this such a sticky problem is that the people that want to model more than any other faction or demographic on the planet are TEEN GIRLS. And who's spirit do we want to break less than theirs? Like they don't have enough to deal with...Acne, peer pressure, physics lab, rising make up prices, shrinking skirts....teen boys....
So your teen daughter comes to you and says: "Mom, Dad, I want to model." Here's where I could say "RUN LIKE A RAT FROM A BURNING BUILDING" but that probably wouldn't be helpful huh? :-)
Every parent thinks that their children are beautiful (I know this writer does). I can't think of too many things that are less subjective than beauty to begin with but then you have to factor in that size and weight matter and no one cares if they are a straight A student, student council president or make their bed everyday. NOW factor in that where you live can put you at at a huge disadvantage and what you have is potential for major disappointment.

So what's a parent to do? You explain to them that there are approximately 1.4 billion women in the world and about 12.5 more since you started reading this blog. Then let them know that the number of super models in the world wouldn't even fill the closest Abercrombie and Fitch. Those are some crazy numbers. I am not saying you can't have your dream (or we wouldn't have ANY super models would we?) but you can't discount these kind of odds either.
The realities of trying your hand at this in another city is fodder for another post.....more to come...