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.