The model child? Is getting your child a modelling contract a good idea – especially if they have additional needs?

 

All parents think their children are beautiful. It’s a clever evolutionary tactic that kids are adorable to their parents – if they weren’t, perhaps parents wouldn’t be quite so willing to be their slaves for so many years of their lives. But it’s quite another thing for other people to think your child is beautiful. In some ways, it can be quite unnerving.

Jonah was born on a Monday. Like the rhyme, he was born fair of face. His very first photos elicited comments like “what a gorgeous baby!”, and “isn’t he handsome?” I glowed, like all new mothers, with self-indulgent pride.

After a while, I  was able to separate the sycophantism we all offer new parents and be more objective about it.  As a toddler, people would frequently comment on how attractive Jonah was – especially if they saw him in a photo: archetypally blonde and cute as a button, I soaked  up the compliments like a maternal sponge. In real life, other concerns took precedence. He may have been lovely to look at, but his toddler behaviour could be quite tricky. Although I felt he was gorgeous enough to rival the kids from the White Company catalogue, and had been offered a couple of opportunities with friends who needed cute kids for business shots for this or that, I thought long and hard before taking him to a model agency for kids.

In fact, far from being a good experience for him,  I felt I would simply be displacing my own latent insecurities about the way I look (I suffer from the usual anxieties and wanted, rather foolishly it seems now, to be a model when I was a teenager, but was certainly not tall enough, aside from anything else.)  Making him aware of, or focusing on how he looks might actually be a very terrible thing to do in one so young, not least in the message I might be giving him in asking him to do things for money based on what adults and brands. How would commodifying his looks and facing the rejection inherent in this notoriously brutal industry nestle in his impressionable young psyche? I worried what would happen when he was no longer considered so attractive – what if, like me, he starts suffering from skin problems in his teens, or god forbid, like my father, hair loss in his twenties. We all know what happened to Jude Law (or do we? Where is he now? Calais, it seems – with, as an aside,  how many children from a variety of mothers?) Looks it seems can be a double-edged sword, and I know from my own days as a dancer that a career built on attractiveness is one built on sand.

In an increasingly narcissistic society, looks are important  – beautiful people are sadly, but correspondingly, more successful in life. But making a virtue of them, when they can be so easily lost, seems foolish. My son might, objectively,  be beautiful, at least, when he’s not having a meltdown. But I knew enough about life to realise that looks are far from the only route to success, for all they might ease the way. Back then, we didn’t know Jonah was Asperger’s, but I knew he struggled to manipulate his body on cue like other kids his age or even smile when he was asked – more often a grimace emerged. He certainly didn’t have the exuberant overconfidence that seems innate in the more successful stage-brats paraded on the likes of Britain’s Got Talent.

So I decided against it, partly because at the time, routine was essential for managing Jonah’s behaviour, rather than putting him through the stresses, strains and ruthless scheduling of a photo shoot – and I had more important things  to do, like getting a job that a paid regular income, rather than relying on albeit well-paid, but sporadic work, whose income would be siphoned into an account that my son could only access as an adult.

Fast forward eight years, and Jonah is no longer an unruly toddler but a lithe and attractive ten-year-old, who can cope pretty well in most situations. He’s still lovely to look at, if increasingly skinny, and looks – to my slightly blinkered eyes at least – like a young Leonardo Dicaprio. Last summer, while we were on holiday, he decided quite of his own accord that he’s like to have a go at modeling. I’m not even sure how it came up. Perhaps we’d talked about how much child stars can be paid, and Jonah, nothing if not money-oriented, pricked up his ears. At an age where the very best he could hope for, jobs wise, is a paper round, getting £300 an hour to pose in clothes feels like big bucks, no matter all the preparation and taxi-ing to castings  I’d have to put up with to get him to that stage. My time, as his chaperone, is apparently worthless, for all pushy parents have made (and perhaps broken) the careers of many a child star – Britney Spears anyone? The outcome of desiring fame and fortune for one’s offspring can be too hideous to contemplate.

Expecting little, and telling him so, I said I’d send in some pictures, and Jonah, who’d previously shown zero interest in the way he looks, responded by taking a series of selfies which, even to my inexperienced eyes, looked quite fashion. I hmmed a bit, and sent them into what I knew from previous investigations to be the best child modeling agency in London (I won’t say which one for fear of harming his chances, but suffice it to say it’s one that rejects far more children than it lets onto its books). They asked him to come in. I blow-dried his hair, tutted over an emerging blackhead and drove him to West London. He was asked onto their books.

Of course I was proud. What mother wouldn’t be thrilled to have your suspicion of your child’s good looks confirmed and validated by an outside source. After all, my own mother had been a child model in the, erm, fifties. Had it done her any harm? I’m not sure, but perhaps her five or so marriages (one to someone she’s previously divorced) attest to some kind of harm from being told how pretty she was as a child. My own belief is that child stars don’t grow up past the point at which they get famous. Michael Jackson was a perennial 7-year-old. Britney Spears is locked as a child-woman at a mental age of 15. It’s the age you first taste power that becomes so difficult to move beyond. So I’m not sure I want fame for my son. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Perhaps it might lead to a couple of editorial shoots. He may get an advert out of it. He might, much like winning the lottery for all my expectations of it, become the next Daniel Radcliffe. It’s unlikely to change his life that much. At best, we’re likely to get a few nice pics out of it. At worst, a photographer will deem him difficult and refuse to work with him, dinting his confidence, but perhaps preparing for the inevitable rejection inherent in the real world. Perhaps he really gets into it and becomes a poster boy for heroin chic or whatever the latest god awful trend is, with all the industry vices that accompany it. Perhaps I’m overthinking it. And I can’t protect him from the world. I can’t protect him from his looks, or the eventual loss of them. Perhaps I feel better about it because he’s a boy and so less likely to have his head turned by flattery and sexual exploitation than if he was a girl – perhaps – who really knows? I have to say I was relieved when, asking Ava, who is equally gorgeous, but who hates getting dressed up or even brushing her hair, if she’d like to have a go,  she said a resounding no.

Jonah’s been on the books since October, and save for a couple of general casting calls that have been inconvenient, he’s had no opportunities so far. I’m told by other parents who use the same agency that it will pick up, that it’s not like some agencies who charge parents  for “lookbooks” and subscriptions, and capitalise on their hopes and dreams. They only take on kids who they believe will get jobs. But looks can be deceiving. Does Jonah really have the sort of personality you need to cope with this industry? Perhaps that’s my biggest question, after all.

Jonah will always be Asperger’s, which perhaps makes him more vulnerable, though also  in some ways,more resilient to the casual brutalities of the fashion and marketing industries: he will always stop when he’s had enough; I doubt he will ever, really care how he looks. And  days more often a delight than difficult, for all he can still be a massive pain in the backside. Do I want him to become like Leo, a serial modelizer, whose career began playing a skinny kid with autism far worse than my son has, and who may have finally won an Oscar, but still comes off as a bit of a prick? I don’t know. All I do know is opportunity doesn’t often come knocking, and when it does, it’s perhaps not wise to look a gift horse in the mouth. But is it worth it for all the risks it entails? Perhaps I should worry about it when he actually gets a job.

 On Saturday, he went along to an acting course organised by the agency   to take part in improvisation with other kids on the books. At £30, I thought it was pricey, and I worried that Jonah would find it tough going. I gave him a pep talk on the way about self-consciousness, and how, as adults, we’re all acting. Jonah’s used to my psychobabble rants and said, after the event, how much he’d enjoyed it. I guess, in the end, who wouldn’t enjoy an hour and a half of professional attention and the opportunity to express oneself – it’s why I quite like job interviews. But like a job interview, there’s no guarantee it will lead to any work.

Just like in the real world, you can have to put a lot of effort in before you get anywhere. But if the real world has taught me anything, it’s to use whatever you’ve got to get ahead in life. Today, along with snaps we had to take at the weekend to keep his portfolio updated (it can feel pretty weird sending pictures of your kid to a virtual stranger), he got good feedback from the agency.

He gets on so well with anybody and everyone and really listened, was happy to give anything a go!

Perhaps it’s a stock response, sent out to all parents to keep the fire of ambition alight, and the hope-fuelled cash rolling in for “optional” extras like acting classes. Yet, hearing this about my son, about who I’d never pick these off as his primary character traits – or even, in some ways, worthy attributes at all, felt, in some ways like reward enough. He can pass as “normal”, whatever that is. Phew! Or is it? I’m so on the fence!

Whether or not he gets any jobs off the back of it, I’ll be interested to find out, and as long as he’s enjoying it, I guess there’s no real harm. But, as I told him on the way to the class, it’s a grown-up industry, for all it might put kids in the spotlight. So there’s part of me that’s happy for him not to worry about how he comes across too much, at least not just yet. I think he’ll have enough to worry about, not least about the way he looks, when the time comes.