Through the Looking Glass-child model, perils in front of camera

[katty]

more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/191266

When I was 8 years old, my mother was watching our local morning television show in suburban Michigan and saw that a New York recruiter was scouting nearby beauty pageants looking for child models. For some time, people had been telling my parents that I was pretty enough to be a "model," so on a whim we drove out to a hotel that was hosting a pageant, just to see what it was all about. One glimpse of a 6-year-old in a bright yellow rhinestone-covered ball gown, wearing more makeup than a cast member of "La Cage aux Folles" (it was the '80s), singing "The Good Ship Lollipop," and we did a 180 and headed for the door.

But while we were in the lobby the New York agent spotted us, and perhaps because I was the only child for five miles who did not look like a Texas stripper, she approached my parents. Nothing came of that conversation, but some months later a business associate of my father's claimed he had connections at Ford Models, the most famous agency in New York. So my mom took some snapshots, and he sent them in. A week later I was in New York at the Barbizon Hotel with my mother, modeling for JCPenney. We spent six weeks in New York that first summer, three months the next and a full five months the following year. As a result I had to switch schools and miss the first six weeks of fifth grade.



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