So ... Your Child is A Model ... Now What? Model Mom Support Thread.

[notwolfy]

This thread is for the moms, many of us new to the modeling world, who are trying to figure things out. It's a crazy world we just got in this is sort of like a road map. It's also nice to know there are others out there just like you.

 

[Chalice]

Thanks for starting this thread.

Some of the decisions about a girl's modeling 'career' may occur when she is a minor, so her parents have to be involved. They may have pursued agents or fallen into the situation, but it is natural for them to worry whether they are doing the right thing for her long-term well-being by supporting it. They probably don't know much about the industry.

Here are some useful threads I've found here:
So you want to be a model (very long, start reading)
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forum...ore-posting-you-must-read-post-1-a-44521.html
How much do models get paid?
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f90/how-much-do-models-get-paid-59674.html
Model agency mega thread
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f52/model-agency-mega-thread-46284.html
Modeling terminology
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f96/modeling-terms-terminology-51878.html
The truth about modeling expenses
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f90/truth-about-modeling-expenses-38476.html
Rise and Fall of the Size Zero
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f49/rise-fall-size-zero-53147.html
Even:
Crappy agencies
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f90/crappy-agencies-30970.html
Model apartments
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f96/model-s-apartments-25651.html
Motivational boards (at fashion/runway shows, behind the scenes)
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f96/motivational-boards-6937.html

You also want to subscribe to threads for models at your daughter's agencies, to see how they are being promoted.

Modelresource.ca and newmodels.com have some interesting reading.

Required reading: Confessions of a casting director
http://coacd.blogspot.com/

Seamless, a video by Doug Keeve available at amazon, showing the fashion industry from the point of view of the fashion designers.

Youtube - Fordmodels

Links:
Conde Naste Fashion Inc.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/fashion-inc
WSJ Heard on the Runway
http://blogs.wsj.com/runway/
Runway Models livejournal (must join to view)
http://community.livejournal.com/runwaym/

Hope there is something here you haven't found yet! What have you found?
What surprised you the most?

 

[papa_levante]

model_mom would be your best bet for all the information you're gonna need, I'm sure!

 

[model_mom]

1. Read up on everything you can find relating to the modeling world before you sign anything.

2. Make sure you and your daughter are willing to make sacrifices when it comes to being away from family and friends.

3. Keep your head on straight on don't believe all the hype you hear from your agents.
Trust your instincts....if it sounds too good to be true....most of the time it is.

4. If your daughter is young....make sure her agent understands that it is you making the decisions and not your 14/15/16 year old.

5. They may front the money for air tickets and board for your daughter but you had better have a fair size bank account if you are along for the ride.

7.Make sure your daughter wants this....she may think she wants it but there are plenty of signs to let you know when it's time to back down. Sometimes a mom gets so wrapped up in all the hype that you forget who this is all about.

8. It's amazing to see your daughter/son on the runway or in an editorial but at first you owe so much money to the agency that it takes campaigns or commercial work to get out of the hole. Your first look at the deductions off of their paycheck can be a real bummer.




(This thread might be moved to the careers and education forum)

 

[LOVEITALL]

All that you've said above is true & Model Mom's advice is great. I frequently read the TFS threads cited by Chalice which all offer lots of info & I've found them all very helpful in learning about the modeling & fashion business. When parents are deciding on whether to let their child jump in and give it a try - there is no "how to" book on being a supportive model parent. Feel free to ask questions of us fellow model parents & thanks to Notwolfy for starting this thread.

 

[Chalice]

So what are some examples of things agents say, that should be taken with a grain of salt?

 

[Chalice]

Age issues

More useful links:

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f96/model-s-age-when-start-how-young-too-young-20586-2.html
http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f96/model-s-age-when-start-how-young-too-young-20586-2.html


From Model Mom in 2005:

Another point that hasn't been addressed is the self esteem issue. Say you take a beautiful young 14 year old. You promise her the moon....big things start happening for her and for a period of a year or two she does the best catwalk,beautiful editorials and even lands a campign or two. Then bingo...the next big thing shows up,you get shoved to the back pages and pretty soon you're yesterdays news. What do you think that sort of experience does to a young girls sense of self worth? She starts to wonder "What? I'm not pretty anymore?" "They don't like me now?" "I've spent the past few years neglecting my education,blown most of the money I've made because I thought it was endless....now what do I do?" This is the story of what happens to 85% of models who get a big break and thats not even counting the ones that stick around who never even got that chance.
Take a look at the back pages of this thread and you will see that I speak the truth. It takes a strong young lady/man to be able to handle that sort of rejection at such a young age.

Stay in school...take a year off before college if you have to give it a chance but don't count on it as a ticket to stardom.

and to all you models out there that made it big and are still on top....my hat is off to you.

And a warning from Model Mom (2005

A young girl lives in a small town and decides she would like to model. She goes to see an agency and they sign you and tell you " Sweetie, you're going to be a star and make lots of money." Even though your moms with you and she should be asking questions you're both so star struck with the idea your theory is "Don't make waves they might change their mind." A week later you go for a "photo shoot with your kid and the photographer says "Oh my God this kid is great, we're going to need more time with her and you let your 15 year old go with him and his assistant at 10:00 in the morning and you don't see her again till 2:00 am the next morning. You swear if you ever get her back and she's Ok you'll take her home and never talk to these people again. On the way home you ask her what outfits she wore for her photoshoot and she tells you, " A swimsuit and a sheet.".....and you start to cry. The next morning you call the agency to give them a piece of your mind and they convince you its Ok that's the way the fashion industry works and it was done "all in good taste".....and you buy it lock stock and barrel. A matter of choice, all it takes is a star struck kid and a mom with no brain.

 

[model_mom]

This message is mostly for mom's whose daughters are not old enough to tackle the world of modeling on their own....

It's very hard not to get wrapped up in the fashion industry especially when your told that your daughter's going to make it big in the modeling scene. It's a whole different world and if you come from a small town it's mind boggling. You let yourself OK things that you would never say yes to ....if you were back home. They'll tell you that the plan for your daughter will include having an open mind about the way things are done in the 'fashion world'. I'm not making excuses but it so easy to go along, when they are making tons of promises about the doors that will open to include your child. You have to be very careful not to let yourself get sucked into this. As long as you are calling the shots and your daughter is handling the pressure of a very fast paced lifestyle,filled with both success and rejection it's quite a trip....but if there comes a time when she says,"This is not fun anymore. I want to go home." listen to her.

 

[Fontenrose]

this is gymnastics, not modeling, but parents can apply the same principle: don't leave important decisions to adults whose income depends on your child.

not to be too negative, just to keep an eye on things.

In 1986, when Jennifer Sey was 15, she lived on fruit and laxatives. She also won the U.S. National title in gymnastics. Sey has written a book about her experiences as a top-tier gymnast called Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams, which came out this week. In an interview with Salon, Sey discusses her experiences boarding at the Parkettes National Gymnastic Training Center under notoriously-brutal coaches Bill and Donna Strauss, who were hellbent on producing winners by "any means necessary." Sey's responses to interviewer Julia Wallace's questions are satisfyingly balanced — Sey points out that the coaches encouraged disordered-eating and dangerous training (and sometimes sexually abused their charges) but also acknowledges that "I was willing to take [the abuse] because I wanted to win." The thing is, Sey, and the majority of her fellow trainees were children ages 10-14. Girls (and boys, too) at that age usually want to please their superiors, whether they be parents, teachers, or coaches. Sey writes about a "coach who hurled a folding chair at a girl who couldn't perform a difficult maneuver on the uneven bars, and the one who used the gym's loudspeaker to humiliate a 10-year-old for gaining one pound." Who among us wouldn't be susceptible to eating disorders and competing with injuries with coaching techniques like the kind Sey endured?
Chalked Up isn't the first book to explore the seamier side of women's gymnastics. The 1995 expose Little Girls In Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters by Joan Ryan covered much of the same ground that Sey treads on. In a chapter called "If It Isn't Bleeding, Don't Worry About It: Injuries," Ryan talks about Julissa Gomez, a girl who looked "ten years old even at fifteen. She stood 4 feet 10 inches and weighed 72 pounds." Gomez is a gymnastics cautionary tale: at a competition in Japan in 1988, she did a dangerous vault called the Yurchenko. According to one of Julissa's teammates, Chelle Stack, said, "You could tell it was not a safe vault for her to be doing. Someone along the way should have stopped her." But no one did, because the Yurchenko meant higher scores. Gomez hit her head on the vaulting horse during warmups at such a speed that she became paralyzed. She died of an infection three years later.
Some gymnasts, like former Olympian Betty Okino, were extremely offended by Ryan's dim view of the gymnastics world. Okino wrote a response to Ryan in 2001, "When the goal is extraordinary, so is the work and sacrifice that has to go along with it. How dare anyone call gymnastics 'celebrated child abuse.' Victims of child abuse aren't given a choice. We as athletes are. We should not blame the USAG, coaches, and the sport of gymnastics for turning out bitter, broken down athletes. Instead we should search for the answers a little closer to home. Those of us who came out of the sport unscarred weren't living our parent's dreams, we were living our own."
But how can one know her dreams so deeply at the age of 10? And anyway, to absolve the coaches of any responsibility creates a dangerous situation where the girls without supportive homes are left to the proverbial wolves (like Romanian gold medalist Nadia Comăneci, who has talked about her eating disorder in recent years). Sey is not calling for an end to gymnastics, she says. But she adds, "All coaches have an obligation to realize that they're not just raising champions, they're raising young women. Hopefully they'll maybe think twice about some of the practices they might employ. I love the sport — I don't want the sport to go down. I just want people to think differently."

notice the offended ex-athletes do not deny the description of the conditions.

 

[janznote]

Oh, I like this thread! Kudos for starting it.

 

[LOVEITALL]

Comparing gymnastics & modeling to me is difficult. Physical god-given beauty and athletic apptitude are different. A model pursues the field or gets scouted into the fashion world. Whereas gymnastics is a sport which takes years and years of training. Who drives their young athlete to practices and training sessions....the parent. Pushing a young girl into modeling is really not the same. If a girl has the "look" then the opportunities arise if she is in the right arena - there is also a considerable amount of luck involved too. There are many many beautiful girls who arrive on the scene constantly. Who gets scouted and brought to the forefront doesn't require endless hours of training - it's the presentation by the agency, photographer, i.e. exposure. A parent can push all they want from the back side and never see a huge breakthrough. A girl who is mature enough to handle the stress of working at such a young age, school, friends, etc. seems to get along. But there are many who don't, they get tired of not breaking in or quite frankly just want a "normal" life and leave after a few years. There are many girls who do leave their families behind in hopes of breaking into the fashion world, statistically speaking how many actually make it big and are cast into the "supermodel" category - no one knows for sure. There are so many levels of modeling and agencies all over the world, you try your best to have your young daughter represented by the team that will look after her best interests when she is far away from you. You pray that God blesses her with maturity to balance all that is thrown at her. Also you hope every day that the big break comes and she gets booked to do a great campaign that can launch her career.

 

[LOVEITALL]

It's so interesting to hear your experiences in Paris & NYC. Being a model mother myself, I can relate to so many of your experiences. You are relating the TRUE LIFE of modeling.... the side that people don't realize when they look at model's pictures in magazines. The behind the scenes.... getting lost, sitting in lobbies and stairwells eating your lunch on the run so you can make all your castings. It's all so overwhelming when you're caught up in trying to break into the business, much less understanding the language, culture and what tomorrow might have in store for you. Finding your way around strange cities with a map and your list of castings. Getting lost time & time again, then finding that the address they gave you has the wrong apt. number - or street name - or they have you sit for a hour or so then dismiss you without scarsely a notice. Disappointments... there are many, loneliness... often, determination... you find that you & your daughter have more than you thought possible. Looking back on the past 3 years, we have lots of funny moments to reflect on, many heartfelt moments. I enjoy my role behind the scenes - being the first one she calls when she gets booked for a job she really wants, the one she calls when moral support is needed, I wouldn't trade this time for anything. These young women are ceasing an opportunity that is god-given and rare. It would have been easy for my daughter to have taken the safe road and gone to college like all her friends have, but she has taken a chance with our support. I would be a liar if I said it has been an easy route, but one that will give her memories to last her entire life. I am truly enjoying reading about Ali's adventures and they spark my own memories. Now that my daughter is working full time on her own, I'm only there for short periods of time at her side now. Nevertheless we talk at least 1-2 times a day, Skype when she is overseas and pray that she is safe all the time!

 

[Fontenrose]

A Model's Story

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f90/one-model-s-story-68147.html

 

[model_mom]

Since I started this story four other modelmoms from tFS have contacted me. They were all telling me how much our stories are alike. You do meet some of them while running around in different cities with your daughter,but most of the time it's just introductions and a hi and a bye because there's not much time to talk. Once in awhile you run into certain moms that size your daughter up and compares them to their own by bragging about what all their daughter is doing,but it doesn't happen very often. Most of us are there to make sure our daughters get where they're going,take time to eat and rest, stay safe(especially when you have a kid that believes the best in everyone and can't imagine anyone wanting to cause them any harm.) But the main reason is to make sure that what ever the agency has planned for them is in their best interest. You go into this trusting that they do,and if you get the right agent you are very lucky.

I wish I knew what some agents are thinking when they see a mom walk through the door. Are they worrying about how much trouble this one is going to be or are they glad to see a mom that's smart enough to realize that there are decisions to be made that concerns their 15/16 year old daughter? You would like to think the latter but I tend to think it might be the first one. We did run into some wonderful people in NY but there are always those few who make you realize that you made the right decision to come along.

 

[smartarse]

* there's a good stage mom and there's a bad stage mom

 

[janznote]

Ali's Mom

I can relate to Ali's story as Sessilee and I came to New York on vacation from Florida just to attend castings when she was just 14 years old (although she told them she was 16). She had been pursuing modeling in Florida and asked for my help. When IMG picked her up, I was in an verbally abusive relationship and as we entered the casting I was still in hysterical tears from a verbal attack in the cab ride over to the casting, while sitting on the floor in IMG's waiting room (I was on the floor because it was standing room only). I tried to hide my tears and prayed to God that if she got this, we would leave this guy in a heartbeat. At the time, I had just lost my job and was about to lose our home too. IMG picked her up and asked if we could move to New York. We had nothing to lose and I had the promise that I made to God. So within a month's time, I sold the house under market value and everything in it, put all of my sentimental things in storage and moved in with my mother's lifetime friend who lived in our old home town of Philadelphia. We figured we'd move there until we could find an apartment close to New York. After a few cold winter months of traveling back and forth on the train to New York everyday, one day in the middle of a snow storm we found a little closet like, but newly renovated apartment in Jersey City, NJ, just across the river from Manhattan. The area wasn't great but it was all we could afford, although the rent was $900 a month (my mortgage for my 1500 sq foot home in Florida was just $600). That was a shocker. Well I still didn't have a job. We were quickly running out of money from the sale of the house. Our car was soon repossessed, and since all of my money went to my daughter's dream of modeling, I couldn't pay anything but the rent and living expenses; which meant that I lost everything that I had in storage. Everything, baby pictures of my girls, a video when they were little in Disney World, my souvenirs from Africa, everything that was ever sentimental to me because I could no longer afford to pay the bill on time. That is actually my only regret in life was losing all of that stuff that can't be replaced. It took about six months for Sessilee to start to make any money, by then I found a good job. I remember crying hysterically the first day working because I was grateful for finding a good job but I was worried sick about my 14-year old navigating the streets of New York City alone. After work, I would home school her. After a while, her career picked up and she is where she is today.

I remember her calling me from Paris at 4 a.m. Eastern time, when she really turned 16. She was crying because she was lost in the middle of Paris, she didn't speak the language, and no taxi would stop for her. I was, of course, panicked stricken because I couldn't go with her this time and wasn't there to help. She went to a casting in Paris with another model who finished before her and left her. Since she didn't pay attention to how they got there, thinking they would be together all day, she had no idea how to get back to the agency. Well, we quickly learned, over the phone, about taxi stands and how to get back to the agency.

There are a lot of behind-the-scenes stories of how models make it and it isn't always glamorous in the beginning. I think those who make it young absolutely cannot do so without their parents. If you don't have support, forget about it.

 

[model_mom]

* there's a good stage mom and there's a bad stage mom

God I was hoping you would reply to that one.

You do the best you can.....if you're smart enough to know that if you do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing your daughters chance's go out the door...so you walk around on thin ice with your yes mames and no mames and do exactly as they say....and hope that they're right but guess what sometimes they're not.

I forgot to mention the only time an agency falls all over the whole family is if their little goldmine hits the jackpot first time out. Nothing wrong with that....thats just the way the BIZ is.


jaznote, I love to read what other mom's go through to help their child succeed in modeling and you and your daughter went through a lot! Congratulation to Sessilee's.

 

[janznote]

You are so right on the money!

God I was hoping you would reply to that one.

You do the best you can.....if you're smart enough to know that if you do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing your daughters chance's go out the door...so you walk around on thin ice with your yes mames and no mames and do exactly as they say....and hope that they're right but guess what sometimes they're not.

I forgot to mention the only time an agency falls all over the whole family is if their little goldmine hits the jackpot. Nothing wrong with that....thats just the way the BIZ is.

jaznote, I love to read what other mom's go throughto help their child succeed in modeling and you and your daughter went through a lot! Congratulation to Sessilee's.

You do walk on ice. I did literally when Sessilee did the Harper's Bazaar shoot in Iceland. At first they didn't want me to go with her but she was only 16 and it was in June -- during the midnight sun. I knew that if I didn't go they would keep her working around the clock since the sun never set -- a photographers dream. They didn't do that but the first iceberg they put her on started to break apart. It was 55 degrees, no where near freezing. I mean this was like a Discovery channel's epic earthquake of an iceberg falling into the depths of a mineral teal-colored sea of broken ice and disappearing for about two minutes under water before pieces of the iceberg would resurface! The 'safety team' ran and left her in her 5-inch heels to fend for herself. They did go back to help her, but after that I insisted that I go on the boat with them. I forgot to say that they left me on shore to overlook the shoot from a cliff the first time. They thought that I would be a meddling mom, but I am in the television production business, so I am not like that but my first concern are my children.

Then there's a shot of her crawling on the ice. That iceberg was falling apart from the backside. I was in the row boat quietly but very insistently hitting the safety guy showing him that the iceberg was breaking apart. I can still imagine the sound of icebergs breaking -- it's unmistakable. I didn't want the photographer or stylist to hear me panicking because this was a big deal for Sessilee. The safety guy heeded my warnings about the broken ice and we shot the rest of the day and watched the sea lions frolic. It was a beautiful shoot and a trip that I will always remember too.

Thanks for your support ModelMom. I miss going with her sometimes. Don't you?

 

[LOVEITALL]

I have shared with Model Mom some of the experiences my daughter has had as a new model. She was able to stay in high school for the first 2 years of her career and her agency would have her come into NY during breaks & for direct bookings only. They must have seen the potential she had to sign her on those conditions is my guess. That level of work doesn't get your career off the ground though - her exposure is very limited. We have a son who is 2 years younger who needs us... also my husband's job takes him on the road about 75% of the time and I work a full time job. Looking back now she probably would have been alot further along in her career if she had been able to work more but we wanted her to have a full high school experience. All of this changed last July when she moved to NY full time to work. After 3 weeks she was very sick and came home to be diagnosed with mono. She recovered about the time her friends left for colleges all around the country. Her long term boyfriend decided it was time to split and here she was getting ready to try her first fashion season in Milan all alone! She missed her connecting flight through NY due to runway congestion but was able to sweet talk a young man at the airline counter into getting her on another airline that same night. She got to Milan but her luggage didn't arrive for 3 more days. She had a driver who spoke about 3 words of English... "Julie good?" "Julie happy?"... no Julie not good and no Julie not happy, no Julie doesn't want to meet your friends and go partying. She was brushing her hair with a toothbrush for days before her luggage arrived, and her roommate & her were swapping clothes. They were so busy with castings and finding their way around that they had no time to go shopping for a hairbrush. She didn't get booked for any shows in Milan and her agency brought her home after a week. She wasn't a happy girl when she arrived back in NY. She stayed there until Christmas and made some good friends who helped her spirits. She did a little work here & there while in NY. She has been working more lately although she's waiting for the career changing break to come her way. She's realistic and has a good head on her shoulders. I try to be strong for her, the home base that she needs - every model she meets has an interesting tale of how they got into modeling. Girls from all over the world sharing stories over a cup of coffee or glass of wine, sitting around a model's apartment watching TV and listening to music....missing home.

 

[janznote]

Hang in there...

I have shared with Model Mom some of the experiences my daughter has had as a new model. She was able to stay in high school for the first 2 years of her career and her agency would have her come into NY during breaks & for direct bookings only. They must have seen the potential she had to sign her on those conditions is my guess. That level of work doesn't get your career off the ground though - her exposure is very limited. We have a son who is 2 years younger who needs us... also my husband's job takes him on the road about 75% of the time and I work a full time job. Looking back now she probably would have been alot further along in her career if she had been able to work more but we wanted her to have a full high school experience. All of this changed last July when she moved to NY full time to work. After 3 weeks she was very sick and came home to be diagnosed with mono. She recovered about the time her friends left for colleges all around the country. Her long term boyfriend decided it was time to split and here she was getting ready to try her first fashion season in Milan all alone! She missed her connecting flight through NY due to runway congestion but was able to sweet talk a young man at the airline counter into getting her on another airline that same night. She got to Milan but her luggage didn't arrive for 3 more days. She had a driver who spoke about 3 words of English... "Julie good?" "Julie happy?"... no Julie not good and no Julie not happy, no Julie doesn't want to meet your friends and go partying. She was brushing her hair with a toothbrush for days before her luggage arrived, and her roommate & her were swapping clothes. They were so busy with castings and finding their way around that they had no time to go shopping for a hairbrush. She didn't get booked for any shows in Milan and her agency brought her home after a week. She wasn't a happy girl when she arrived back in NY. She stayed there until Christmas and made some good friends who helped her spirits. She did a little work here & there while in NY. She has been working more lately although she's waiting for the career changing break to come her way. She's realistic and has a good head on her shoulders. I try to be strong for her, the home base that she needs - every model she meets has an interesting tale of how they got into modeling. Girls from all over the world sharing stories over a cup of coffee or glass of wine, sitting around a model's apartment watching TV and listening to music....missing home.

It only takes one person to make her career happen. She must do what it takes to stand out from the crowd as there are millions of beautiful girls but the ones who stand out, who are different and not just beautiful, get the attention. I have found that the ones who hang in there the longest often get a break too but it's hard when there is no money coming in. That's why many models take a job at night or on the weekends. If you're good at it send out press releases about her accomplishments. It works sometimes. Good luck.