The life of child models (and the mothers behind them)

It's Monday morning and Harriet Ball is late for work. Her two-year-old daughter, Athena, has taken a sudden exception to her breakfast cereal, and now Harriet can't find her car keys.

It's a scenario most working mothers will recognise, but the job that Harriet, 32, is hurrying to get to isn't hers. It's her daughter's. Although she hasn't yet celebrated her third birthday, Athena already has her own bank account. She's paid regularly by BACS and has so far accumulated about £5,000.

Athena is a child model and, although her mother has faced harsh criticism from friends for 'exploiting' her child, Ball, a part-time police officer from Bedfordshire, has no regrets about her choice of career for her young daughter.

'When Athena was born I decided to work part-time. Working only a couple of days a week, I knew I wouldn't be able to save for Athena's future. I couldn't put money aside for university or to help her with a deposit on a house, so I hit on the idea of putting her up for modelling jobs,' she explains. Ball's partner, John, 45, a police community support officer backed her decision.

Athena Ball with her mother, Harriet. Photo: DAN BURN-FORTI

At the tender age of just four months Athena landed her first job advertising a Teletubbies toy and she hasn't looked back. 'Athena is quite busy. She's called up for castings [modelling auditions] several times a month and has modelled for lots of different companies. I've got quite blasé about it now,' Ball says, adding that she sometimes she doesn't even see the finished product.

When I meet her Athena is busy drawing pictures. She looks and sounds like a perfectly normal preschooler. When I ask her if she likes having her picture taken she nods. 'Mummy gives me sweets,' she says, grinning impishly. Harriet insists that Athena doesn't get bored or unhappy during castings or shoots. 'There are always lots of toys to play with and usually it's very quick. The longest we've spent at a shoot was two hours - that was one that required lots of costume changes. She doesn't mind at all,' her mother says.

Even if she did mind, modelling can be so lucrative that it might be hard to wave goodbye to all that cash, says Claire Halsey, a clinical psychologist and the author of Ask a Parenting Expert. 'Sometimes motives can be muddled when there is financial gain involved,' she says. 'Some children do enjoy modelling, but that doesn't mean it's good for them. Generally it is better to encourage interests over which children have control. They have very little control over what they look like.'

That may be so, but some children are so entranced by the world of modelling that they are absolutely determined to be part of it. This, according to Hagit Tal, 47, a jewellery designer from north London, was the case with her daughter, Ophir, who is now seven.

Neither Tal, nor her husband, Boaz, 46, a technical solutions expert, had envisaged their only child modelling, but Ophir, whom her parents call Fifi, was insistent. 'Fifi was obsessed by television adverts and modelling. She was desperate to do it herself. She nagged and nagged until finally I relented and rang a couple of agencies. That was three years ago. She really seems to have found her métier,' Tal says.

Ophir (Fifi) Tal with her mother, Hagit Photo: DAN BURN-FORTI

Fifi comes across as poised and polished. 'I like doing commercials best. I feel proud when I see myself on television,' she says with disarming honesty. Her mother tells me that several directors have asked to work with Fifi again because she is, despite the fact that she is still in primary school, 'very professional'.

'My daughter has extremely high standards. She never wants a break. She takes direction really well and is always enthusiastic,' Tal says, adding that, at the moment, she is happy to encourage her daughter's fascination with the glamorous world of showbiz. 'I'm aware that there are issues around the early sexualisation of children, but I always ensure I'm at shoots so I can vet what Fifi is asked to wear or do. I haven't come across anything inappropriate so far.'

Harriet Ball agrees. 'Athena has never been asked to wear make-up. I'm always with my daughter when she's modelling and she's never been asked to do anything even remotely worrying.' Dr Halsey, however, believes that it is entirely possible that parents involved in the modelling industry become desensitised and don't recognise sexually inappropriate clothes or poses.

'I'd advise any parents whose children are regularly modelling to check with other parents about what they think in terms of the way their children are being portrayed. Some static poses, even of very young girls, are actually quite sexual - a hand on the hip, a pout, perhaps a little chest stuck out. Parents need to be extremely vigilant about possible sexual connotations,' she warns.

There has been public disquiet over the way that little girls are being used interchangeably with adult women in the modelling industry. Last year French Vogue provoked outrage when it published pictures of the 10-year-old model Thylane Blondeau posing provocatively in high heels, heavy make-up and a dress slashed to the waist.

Meanwhile the veteran model Cindy Crawford has called a halt to her own 10-year-old daughter's budding career. After Kaia appeared in the recent Versace campaign, Crawford reportedly vetoed modelling for the next seven years claiming that 10 was just too young to model.

Conversely, Arabella Raheem's mother, Amariyah, 32, has decided she will stop her daughter modelling when she's 14. 'Once the girls are in their teens it's too sexualised,' she says. Quite how she will insist that Arabella give up posing for the camera is unclear. 'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Arabella is very confident and I know it might be a struggle to make her stop,' she admits.

Arabella Raheem with her mother, Amariyah Photo: DAN BURN-FORTI

At the moment eight-year-old Arabella is working steadily and Raheem's seven-year-old son, Jaadin, has just begun to model, too. 'Ever since Arabella was tiny people have stopped me in the street to comment on her looks. So many people told me I should get her into modelling that I thought, "Why not?"'

In her five-year modelling career, Arabella has earned roughly £10,000. 'It's all in a bank account for her. I came from a huge family of 10 children. There wasn't any money for luxuries; in fact, there was barely enough to survive on and I don't want the same thing for my daughter. I want her to have all the opportunities I didn't,' Raheem says.

A single mother from London, Raheem has set up two businesses - a salon that folded last year at the same time as the relationship with her children's father collapsed, and her latest venture, British Model Kids. 'It's a school for models aged 0 to 16. We have workshops on catwalk, choreography and model presentation, preparing children for castings and shoots. We teach them what to expect on a shoot, how to behave and how best to present themselves,' Raheem says.

She admits that modelling can be tedious for the children but believes there's nothing wrong with that. 'My children are learning the values of self-discipline and patience.' There's no doubt that Raheem is driven. 'I set out to achieve independence and self-sufficiency and I want the same thing for my daughter. The first time I saw Arabella on a poster - she was advertising clothes for a major department store - I burst into tears. I was just so proud,' she says.

Dr Halsey acknowledges that enjoying our children's achievements is only natural, but warns against the temptation to live vicariously through a child. 'It's important to take a step back and assess honestly whether your child really is happy. Of course we all want our children to be successful, but the best goal you can have as a parent is for your child to be happy,' she says.

I can't help but think these children should be spending their spare time playing rather than at photo-shoots, but Raheem and Ball both insist that their children are happy. 'Athena likes having her photo taken. If she ever seemed unhappy I'd stop her modelling straight away,' Ball says. Arabella herself tells me that she enjoys modelling. 'It's fun. I like it,' she says simply. Jaadin concurs. 'Most of the time it's really good,' is his assessment.

When her children don't want to go for a casting, however, Raheem puts her foot down. 'I make them go even when they'd rather play with their friends. I tell them it's good for them. It'll enhance their CVs and they'll make valuable contacts,' she says bluntly. Perhaps because of her impoverished background, Raheem is openly driven in her desire for her children to succeed in the modelling world.

Hagit Tal does, however, admit that her own mother worries about Fifi's modelling career. 'She thinks Fifi is being exposed to an adult world when she is too young to cope with it,' Hagit says, but counters that she herself was probably over-protected.

'I wish I had been a little more exposed to the realities of life as a child. Dealing with money, for example, came as a huge shock to me.' Neither Fifi nor Arabella comes across as precocious. Both are dressed in pretty, girlie clothes, neither wears make-up and they seem, as their mothers insist they are, reassuringly childlike.

I ask if rejection is a problem. 'Of course Arabella is disappointed if she doesn't get a job, but she knows there's always another time,' says Raheem. Tal says that she probably gets more upset at the rejection than her daughter does. 'Fifi really doesn't mind. But no mother likes it when her child is rejected.'

Even if their mothers are right, and the girls really don't mind rejection, problems may emerge later. 'If your identity is very closely bound up with modelling, what happens when the phone stops ringing?' Dr Halsey asks. 'If you are known as a model at school, and perhaps get some kudos for that, it's going to be hard if suddenly your face no longer fits and you stop getting work.'

That, of course, is a very real possibility for these children. Charlotte Evans, who runs Elizabeth Smith, a leading child-model agency based in London, is quite clear about the brutalities of the industry. 'Clients tell us what they want. Some faces are right and others aren't. Sadly there does come a time when some of our models no longer have a look that fits,' she says.

When this happens it can be difficult, but most parents are, she asserts, realistic about the vagaries of the industry. 'They know that very, very few child models go on to make it as adult models because the market is so different,' she says. When the work does dry up she will discuss the situation with parents rather than leave them waiting forlornly by the phone. 'Work often disappears when a child loses their milk teeth. Clients don't want gappy teeth and parents understand that,' she says.

For the moment, though, Athena, Fifi and Arabella are in demand. They are blessed with the sort of looks that sell everything from babyhood to designer Italian knitwear. And as for the future, well, Tal hopes that Fifi will develop her interest in television. 'I'd like Fifi to think about working behind the camera as well as in front of it,' she says, adding that Fifi has recently started attending a stage school part-time. Raheem, meanwhile, dreams of handing on a thriving modelling school to her children. 'I want my daughter to get into the business end of modelling,' she says.

Athena, who is still at nursery, chews on a rusk while her mum smiles and admits that she hasn't given the future much thought. 'She'll model as long as she's happy doing it,' she says. Athena looks expectantly at me, 'Photo?' she asks and I'm sure she looks slightly peeved when I shake my head.

Via: The life of child models (and the mothers behind them)

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