The recent outcry over a "Team Supermodel" strut showing off British fashion during the Olympics' closing ceremony underlined a dichotomy: as much as people want the conventional glamour of the moment, they don't want to feel guilty about it, i.e. have it exposed by direct comparison to the purportedly natural physical beauty of athletes.
Yet there are parallels between these two groups, particularly in the realm of concerns about weight and drugs. Plus, being a sports star and a model are both roles that allow the performer to actually merit being "entitled." Everyone wants to be special — though of course that only works if other people aren't.
The disturbingly instructive new documentary Girl Model (opening Fri/14) makes a good case for not encouraging such desires in your child, because the likelihood is that someone will come along to exploit that desire, convincingly promise them fame, then leave them worse off than before, with debts accrued from the dream that didn't come true. "The first secret to a successful modeling career is to start modeling at five or ten years old," says an emcee at a cattle-call showcase early on in David Redmond and Ashley Sabin's film. It's Russia, where the relatively new capitalism trickles down even less than here, so the families are even more eager to turn little Svetlana into a moneymaker. But that way lies madness, or at least deceit and disappointment.
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