So it is official. All of my children have now been international models. Luckily, they take after their mother and are much better looking than me.

Now I should state up front that I am not one of THOSE parents. I have not been dragging them from agency to agency insisting that they have representation nor have I been pushing my children into beauty pageants since before they went to school. The modeling has been in Japan and India where being a cute white kid provides far more advantages that it rightfully should, and if you have blonde hair all the better.

It all started innocently enough. We were referred to an agent in Japan by friends whose daughter did some modeling as they were desperately trying to find young boys for clothing ads. K and Q did some occasional modeling – mainly clothes and shoes, but also some electronics ads, and there was a really surreal condominium ad that K did with a fake family. C’s first job was before she was a month old. I remember T getting a peculiar phone call from the agent one day when she was pregnant – “Have you had the baby yet, we need a white baby.” The kids were cute, the money was good and they were happy to buy a toy and the rest got put into an RESP. Then we moved back home where they were completely unremarkable and life got busy. No modelling was pursued.

Fast forward 10 years to India. We were sitting down having a drink with friends at the German Christmas festival in Mumbai and an agent pops up out of the blue with a business card. Now what kid doesn’t like being told they are cute and that they could be a model? Conversely, what parent doesn’t immediately start thinking “why are you looking at my child? Back off right now or I may have to hurt you.” The lady seemed nice enough but I didn’t take it too seriously. She asked for phone numbers and I gave her an email, and left it at that.

Sure enough she emailed me asking for a few pictures of the kids, and before I know it people are at my door with a bag full of clothes to see if they fit. The first set of dresses unfortunately were off size for the girls, but the Ele é pajama company (of course everybody knows Ele é…….nope, me neither) liked K2’s “look” and before I knew it I was at a studio in the middle of nowhere. Studio, to me, invokes thoughts of glamour and the like. This studio (and most studios I have been to in Japan for that matter as well) was lacking in the charm department. Tucked away on the top floor of a woe-begotten apartment complex which had definitely seen better days, the studio was basically a converted apartment that was, for lack of a better word, sketchy.

From the pictures, however, you would never know it was a dive. It is amazing though what a white throw rug and some lighting can do. The white wicker chair in the back looks great, but if you sat on it the back would give way and you would be flat on your bum.

K2 and I showed up at the studio just after 2pm, after getting lost and stuck in the predictable Mumbai traffic. As with most things in India they rarely start on time. It wasn’t until we had already been there for about half an hour that the photographer and the crew finally showed up. That, however, gave time for K2 to get her hair and makeup done.

I didn’t give it much thought before, but in retrospect I probably should not have let her show up in her sweaty PE clothes. We were probably there for a good 90 minutes before they took their first photo. The other model showed up around 5:30 and they did some shots together. We were supposed to be done around 6:30 but we didn’t get out until about 7:15 — and in just five hours she shot 25 different pairs of pajamas.

(nothing says pajama-time like a kid with a coffee mug in hand)

In this small studio place, it amazed me all of the people who were working behind the scenes. There was:

• The Photographer
• The Assistant Photographer (and chief bubble blower)
• The Hairstylist, and main person to interact with models on shoot
• The Make-up Artist
• The computer guy (and chief turtle herder)
• The clothes organizer
• The guy who ironed the clothes
• 2 modelling agent representatives – the pleb, and then the agency owner popped in for a while to check how things were going
• Client representative
• 2 gophers who did whatever they were told
• The other 10 year old model and her mom
• 4 bunnies
• 2 turtles
• And one guy who I have absolutely no idea what he did or why he was there (oops that might have been me — but there was another one too)

And yes, you read that correctly, there were live animals.

It is always a risk when taking pictures with subjects that don’t listen (be it animals or young children) but they lucked out as K2 adored playing with the bunnies and turtles. The other child obviously wasn’t as comfortable with the animals and the photographer had to go back and forth between telling her to “relax” and not look so rigid, and “don’t squeeze the bunny to death!”. For a while I was worried that K2 was scheming for a way to bring all the animals home with us, but in the end she settled for a helium balloon as a souvenir of her first photo shoot.

Now when the older kids were modeling in Japan they were quite young (anywhere from 1 month to 6 years old) and so it was a lot more hands on for us as parents, and at times was extremely stressful. Those of you with kids know that sometimes 4 year olds do not want to smile and perform on command. To have K1 do natural smiles when he started out we had a signal which reminded him of something that was really funny, and today I can still make him laugh by doing that sign.

With K2 being 8 (and, just by virtue of her personality, completely independent in absolutely every facet of her life) it was much easier for me to sit back and enjoy.  There is also the fact that models in India are paid about 1/3 the going rate in Japan, so I wasn’t terribly stressed. To be perfectly honest the amount wasn’t really enough to make me want to get out of bed, but I am glad I did. K2 had a fabulous time, enjoyed the experience immensely, and is extremely happy to have had the opportunity to be just like her older siblings.

But now that she’s done it once for fun, if the agent wants her (and conversely me) to do it again, we are going to have to renegotiate the going rate.