The shoot, which appears in the Tom Ford edited December 2010 edition of French Vogue, features young children, including 10-year-old Thylane, in slinky heels and low-cut designer dresses, dripping in expensive gold jewellery, reclining on tiger-skins and a chaise lounge. This has left many questioning the tastefulness of the shoot, with some condemning the images as indecent.
Thylane’s mother inititally spoke out to defend the shoot but has since only further highlighted the issue at hand, by stating on Facebook that she wants to protect her daughter from this scandal, as ‘she’s so young’, before closing her Facebook page down earlier this week.
With actresses like 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld and 13-year-old Elle Fanning being chosen to front major fashion campaigns for Miu Miu and Marc by Marc Jacobs respectively, is the fashion industry developing a worrying obsession with underdeveloped, pre-teen girls? The Elle Fanning advertisements feature her in a Lolita-esque pose, drawing comparisons with Nabokov’s novel about a paedophile. The book may be a literary classic, but surely it’s not something that should be referenced by using a 13-year-old girl to sell perfume?
The use of underage models in photo shoots and advertising campaigns is a worrying, dangerous trend. Sexualising children in this way is a dangerous game - what happens to these child models when they grow up and are no longer desirable for such shoots? Will they develop eating disorders to stay child-like, and thus, wanted? And apart from that, we’re finally starting to break away from the traditional concept that unattainably skinny waifs are the height of beauty. Why would anyone want to go back there again?
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