#Young teenage girl models free

Enjoying your childhood and adolescence should be a priority. This is a work environment that values girls solely for how much their exteriors can be commodified, sexualizes them without any regulation or emotional support, and encourages their thinness at any cost. The entire construct - placing young women on pedestals where they are exploited, prematurely sexualized and constantly reminded that their value has an expiration date - needs some serious rethinking. The fact is, very few models actually “make it.” Year after year young women sacrifice an education and their own well-being for the misdirected hopes of what modeling might someday bring. Outside the industry, young women gaze at these models’ images and become increasingly dissatisfied with their own bodies, often feeling driven to sacrifice their own health just to look like them.Ĭhildhood, education and health should come first. Many models in the industry are trapped deep in the throes of body image issues and eating disorders. The message that sex sells, skinny sells, youth sells and perfection sells has led countless young women into mental and physical health crises. If you show up to a photo shoot and the only size available is a double-zero, the unspoken expectation is still loud and clear. And all too often there is an implicit size expectation. There is pressure on young girls to get thinner without any nutritional guidance or concern for the link between dieting and disordered eating. The impact of the industry’s body size and weight standards cannot be overlooked. The modeling industry has very real and very dangerous body-size standards. Young models are expected to shrug off their instincts and comply with the industry’s very grown-up demands. It’s challenging for young people to assert boundaries, to trust their instincts and to determine whether an adult in a position of power is doing right by them. Employment of minors is only one of many of the industry’s perilous practices in need of radical transformation. While a new age requirement is a step in the right direction, even at 16, models are entering an adult world with adult expectations and adult problems. Young models are children in an adult industry.Īs a model for nearly 25 years, and now a mother of two young daughters, I have a strong and certainly personal viewpoint on some of the dangerous and often overlooked pressures within the modeling industry. During that time, it is highly unclear how in the hell this half-baked person is going to work out, but if you continue to treat them as though you believe in them, they will almost always, in the end, respond by giving you good reason to.We should remember three crucial facts when we talk about teenage models and age limits. What they need much more is to see us as human allies.įinally, remember that parenting is a long journey, and adolescence is the narrow road. And at this age, kids are no longer interested in seeing their parents as infallible authorities. Even if she’s not listening, trust me, she’s listening. Do not be afraid to tell her how you’ve learned to navigate a world that sometimes wants you to think you are not good enough. And finally, do not be afraid to share with her experiences you’ve had with self-consciousness, with self-doubt.

You want her to feel that you are doing that because it’s helpful, not because you think she’s dumb and can’t figure out the world on her own. Only then should you make it your job to introduce some critical perspectives about what she’s seeing and feeling and experiencing. Make it your first job to find out what she likes about it and why it’s important to her. Do not tell her it’s stupid or dumb even if you think it is. Let her talk to you about what she thinks is important. Ask her about her shows, about her Instagram. And also support her in thinking critically about what she’s seeing in the world. So support her in feeling loved and accepted. Most parents think they have a strategy for avoiding such things, as I’m sure you did, but it turns out that, like all parents of teens, whatever you had, it wasn’t enough.

#Young teenage girl models free

In my experience, part of what makes parenting teenagers so hard is that completely terrible things-like seeing your heretofore free and unburdened child suddenly descend into a quivering, self-conscious mess under the sway of social media models and shows where lip injections and perfect brows are written as admirable personality traits-are both developmentally appropriate and totally outside of your ability to prevent. The bad news is also that this is normal. Should we be worried? What should we do? It feels like our little kid has been replaced by someone else’s vapid and shallow teenager and we’re not ready for it! We know some of this is normal teenage stuff, but we worry it’s something beyond that.