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Hi my names Trudi Tapscott and I want to explain to you some of the misconceptions that parents
have when their kids are starting out in modeling. For someone like me who is a scout in America
and I work with kids from their hometown and I encourage them to stay in school, I want
them to be well rounded, so I work with the parents. We work together to protect their
child while their child is trying to grow up in to a well-rounded young lady and become
a professional model. So there are a lot of things to consider.
In other words, a client might want a model or an agency might want a model to come and
start; they see her pictures, they think she is great, they want her to come to New York
City right away. Well, she is 16 years-old and her parents and I know from working with
her closely that she is not ready to do that, that is not a good decision for her at this
particular time. She might be somebody that comes from an environment, or whatever, their
character, she's grown up slowly, whatever the situation is, maybe she is getting bad
grades in school, there is a ton of reasons why, since I am working with the family, then
I want to be respectful of what parents need in order for her to grow up and possibly pursue
modeling.
So I am a big believer in guiding parents with the right information. However, every
parent thinks that their child is special, and they are special. But when it comes to
a business they have to have a skill and a talent beyond their specialness. So explaining
to parents that it's a business, I think, the hardest thing is when a mother, especially,
starts seeing something happen for her daughter. So let's say we get the first test pictures
back and we edit what are the right pictures to promote her. A mother sees her daughter
completely differently than how a professional sees her daughter as a model.
So those kinds of conversations, sometimes you can learn just enough to be dangerous,
so you think you know but it's very hard to look. It's like if I were to look at a picture
of myself and a professional were to look at a picture of myself, we're going to see
something completely different. That is what parents, because they are the protector of
their kids, so. Usually pictures, this is a business, I mean, I have to give everybody
a gold medal in the sense that nobody knows about this business. You could live in the
middle of Oklahoma and you're just as afraid of knowing more about the business. There's
no resource to get the right information. There is no place to go.
It's not like your Aunt Sally was in this business. Whereas family businesses you learn
things; you know things, it's obvious. This business nothing is really obvious. No story
is really the same, the steps that one person should take are not necessarily the right
steps for the other person because it is very individual.
A lot of parents think they can travel with their daughter everywhere. Well, you can if
you've got the money to do that. No one is going to pay for you to do that. Your daughter
is not going to be a star until she is a star. There is work to do, and sometimes when they've
graduated from high school and they are considered adults legally, the same way you would send
them off to college to learn on their own they have to learn this on their own. You
can't do it for them and sometimes you want to be there for everything but I think that
parents have to realize that it's an adult business. If she is doing it full-time it
is the same career if she went to college, or went to work in a store, or if she went
to work on the stock market, or wherever You aren't going to go to work with your kid every
day.