If you take the title of this article out of context, it might invoke many thoughts.
If you look at it from a positive perspective, if you are the parent of a Child Model, and since this is a site about Baby Modeling and Child Modeling, a 10 year old girl being on the front cover of Vogue could be inspiring to many of you.
However, the story that we are reporting is not quite that straightforward. This particular photo shoot has attracted a great deal of controversy, and with good reason.
Despite the fact that Thylane Loubry Blondeau is just 10 years old, she has already been modeling for many years. This is probably something that many of you can relate to. You may be the parent of a child model who was once a baby model.
Thylane is the daughter of Patrick Blondeau (a former soccer player), and Véronika Loubry, a former c-list television celebrity.
She has been in a great number of fashion shoots and advertising campaigns. And now she can add Vogue to her portfolio.
The world of fashion usually walks on a tightrope. You may find the photographs of Thylane shocking, and with good reason in our opinion. The tightrope seems to have been obliterated in the case of the Vogue shoot.
In our opinion, there is rarely (if ever) a justifiable reason to endorse the sexualisation of kids – and this is exactly what Vogue has done with Thylane. Photo shoots such as the one in question are one of the reasons why child modeling has such a bad reputation amongst certain people.
You have to ask yourself this question – at the age of 10, can a child really be aware of the implications of such a photo shoot? Do they really want to present themselves in such a fashion? And furthermore, should they be allowed to?
You often see arguments that the often materialistic world of fashion has a very negative impact on how girls view themselves, and how they are in turn viewed by boys. If it is now au fait to consider a girl a sexual creature at the age of 10, then what childhood is left for our kids?
So what does this ultimately mean for child modeling? When all is said and done, very little. Such controversy is not new – look no further than Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver and Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby for past instances of the sexualisation of young girls. One might try to argue that their controversy is compensated somewhat by the fact that their performances are in the medium of art. That is certainly a defence of sorts – but a defence that cannot be used to defend Thylane’s shoot.