The Ten Year-Old Muse of the Fashion Industry

Posted by Zanele Mji on Sep 2, 2011 in body politics | 1 comment

Fashion’s fixation with youth is nothing new.  A good number of top models are discovered and begin working just after their first adolescent growth spurt.  Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Chanel Iman and Jordan Dunn all reached superstar status at sixteen.

But how young is too young to be exposed to the scrutiny, sexualisation an explotative elements of the fashion industry?  This is ten-year-old Thylane Blondeau and she’s the latest big name in modelling.  At the age of four she walked the runway for Jean-Paul Gaultier and was featured in a Vogue spread which, ironically, took on fashion’s fetishization of youth as its subject.  While people found the Vogue spread unsettling, it is the rest of Thylane’s portfolio of work which has sparked a serious outcry.  Like the photo above in which her tousled hair, smouldering look and finger hooked casually into her jeans remind me of a Diesel ad minus about four or five years.  Is an inappropriately young girl being sexualised?

Some have argued that she’s not much younger than many of the girls who begin working at fourteen.  While this may be the case, it hardly constructs a defense for choosing to insert girls that are even younger into the adult world.  There are just so many risks associated with allowing strangers to interact with and project their ideas onto the body of such a young and vulnerable person.

Between lingerie for little ones and pre-pubescent supermodels, the parameters that have been traditionally placed on childhood are most definately shifting.  It’s been argued that awareness of one’s sexuality should not be reserved or associated with any particular age.  While that may be the case, it should be a natural process and discovery, not brought on by adults who style girls to mimic the appearance and behaviour of women much older than them.

Images via: Jezebel.com