How young is too young?
That question has been swirling in the fashion industry since Janice Dickinson made herself the first supermodel in the 1970s, so it's no surprise that the question is again resurfacing now that Maddison Gabriel was chosen as the "face" and official ambassador of the Gold Coast Fashion Week in Australia a few weeks ago, just before her thirteenth birthday.
The story is just now making it to the US media circuit, but it seems the only controversy being discussed anywhere is her age.
Okay, she's barely a teenager. So what. Brooke Shields was 14 when she signed a contract with Ford Models and posed for her famous Calvin Klein jeans advertisement. Kate Moss was 15. Not to mention actors Katherine Heigl and Lindsay Lohan got their start posing for the camera.
What bothers me more than Maddison's young age is the idea that the fashion industry is now employing preteens as representations of the ideal woman, and I don't think I need to point out the surplus of differences between a 13-year-old and a mature woman, or even an 18-year-old.
It disturbs me that the barely pubescent body of this young model is now viewed as the standard for all women. Sure, she was only chosen as the official representative of an Australian Fashion Week, but models have a great deal of social influence in any culture. Maddison is dressed in clothing designed for women two and three times her age, so do we really expect those consumers to look like a 13-year old?
I think we're sick if that is true. Go ahead and be physically fit, but a hint of reality needs to be present in the world of fashion. I commend the Madrid city council, which sponsors the Madrid Fashion Week, for a 2006 order that every model on show must have a body mass index (BMI) of at least 18.
Although this action was fought by some Spanish model agencies, in a society where body image problems are overly abundant for every age group, any step taken to counteract the idea that all women must be borderline anorexic is appreciated.
So is Maddison Gabriel too young to model? Not really. She is just the newest representative of fashion's oldest obsession: youthfulness. The business might affect her in the long run like Janice Dickinson has predicted, but the business has already affected millions of other women who formulate self-destructive fitness plans in order to live up to the standards set by the same models Maddison catwalks with.