New Modeling Star Is Barely 13

Maddison Gabriel has blue eyes, dark blond hair, and is 5-foot 7. That’s not very tall for a model, but in this case, she could still grow a few inches. She just turned 13 years old.

Chosen when she was 12 to be the official ambassador of Gold Coast Fashion Week in Queensland, Australia, she apparently wore a number of revealing outfits during the event. How revealing? I don’t know, but I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t have met the dress code at my middle school.

Her participation has sparked strong debate in Australia, with Prime Minister John Howard deeming it unacceptable. “Catapulting girls as young as 12 into something like that is outrageous,” he said. “There should be age limits -- I mean there has to be -- we do have to preserve some notion of innocence in our society.” Europe has set an age limit of 16 for appearing on catwalks (I didn’t know that); he wants Australia to do the same.

But Maddison’s mom has demanded an apology from the Prime Minister. He’s getting “very doddery,” she says. “He does not know exactly what 13 and 14-year-old girls are like. I used to vote for him. We’re trying to get our teenage daughters to act older.”

Why? So old rich guys will want to date them?

Fashion Week spokesman Kelly Wieler said, “Maddy got in because she was the best contestant. The judges saw that she was fit to do the job.” She added that Maddy wouldn’t be modeling swimwear or lingerie. (She didn’t mention that many designer clothes look just like lingerie and are just as revealing.)

As for Maddison, she feels she deserved to win and become the “face” of the show. “I believe that I can fit into women’s clothes, I can model women’s clothes, so I should be able to do it, she insisted. “It doesn’t matter about age. It matters that you can do the job. Modeling is all I’ve wanted to do since I was six. I don’t think I’m too young.”

If she can fit into women’s clothes, it’s because most of them seem designed for women who are built like 12-year-olds. And even though I’ve said many times and believe with my whole heart that “it doesn’t matter about age,” I am always talking about the world of adults. This is another issue entirely.

For me, the most important question to ask is why the “face” of this women’s fashion event is that of a barely 13-year-old girl. “Best” is subjective; why was she considered the “best” contestant? She’s a cute girl, and if this were a junior fashion show, she would be perfect. But this event is for grownup women, and I don’t understand why grownup women are supposed to aspire to look like a seventh-grader, albeit a very tall one playing dress-up in mommy’s makeup and heels.

This attitude about fashion and beauty is not unique to Australia. Here in Dallas, we have an annual event called the Fashion!Dallas/Kim Dawson model search. (Fashion!Dallas is part of The Dallas Morning News, and the Kim Dawson Agency is a local modeling agency.) Each year, hundreds of contestants show up at a mall to have their pictures snapped. There are specific height and age requirements. Judges select the finalists, whose pictures appear in the paper. Readers get to vote for their faves and select two Readers’ Choice winners, but the judges pick the actual winner or winners. This is a big deal; being chosen can really jump-start a career in modeling. Case in point: the first year’s winner, Erin Wasson, who went on to be a top international model.

The age threshold for a girl entering this contest is 14; the cutoff age is, I think, 21. Last year, the girl who won, Ali Michael, was – you guessed it -- 14.

I’m reminded of myself at 14, certainly tall enough to model after growing six inches in one year! My height was 5-foot-9, considerably taller than most of the boys (alas), and I was to grow another inch. I was skinny, too, with blue eyes and long, straight, very blonde hair. But I was painfully shy, absolutely naïve, and certainly no fashion plate; Mom made most of my clothes. I’d gotten contact lenses but was a year or so away from wearing makeup. Maybe someone could’ve gotten hold of me then and made a model out of me, but I’m glad nobody did. I was a baby – way too young. I wasn’t at all ready to be a model in the very adult and sometimes rough world of fashion.

Today, though, the fashion world actually seems to prefer babies to wear its grownup clothes. It’s not my imagination – the models really are getting younger. In real life, some of these models wouldn’t even be old enough to wear a prom dress.

By amazing coincidence (I’d already started writing this piece), today’s paper features this year’s finalists in the Model Search. There are a dozen finalists this year, all girls, ranging in age from 14 to 20. The 20-year-old, a 5-foot-11 brunette named Ren Vokes, is described as the “elder statesman” of the group. “Everyone here is 14 and I’m 20,” she observes. “I feel like an old person for the first time in my life.”

Cry me a river.

Not all the other girls are 14, but most are 14-16. Looking at their headshots, I’d think they all could get work as professional models. (An interesting aside: one of the 14-year-olds is Asian, and she still has Eastern-style eyes, with no fold. I wonder if this pretty girl will feel pressure to change that.) In the photos, they all look closer in age than they actually are. I don’t have a favorite to win, but I’d be more likely to bet on one at the lower end of the age range than the upper end.

I can remember, way back in the Jurassic Period, when teenage model Brooke Shields created a scandal just by saying, “Know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” It was widely thought that she was too young to do such a suggestive ad. Times have changed. Young teens now look to such stunning role models as Paris Hilton as their fashion icons.

Even so, my concern is less for the extremely young girls involved in modeling than for the grownup women who feel compelled to try to look like them. Think about it: even a 30-year-old woman is surrounded by images of girls half her age. Some of these models are in ads for anti-aging products.

What is wrong with this picture?

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Next time: “To Gray Or Not To Gray…that is the question,” and you better get the answer right because it’s an incredibly significant personal statement and a matter of political correctness. Or so I’ve read.