Living the teen dream: How young is too young to model? A former teen model speaks out

HOW young is too young to model? A former teen model speaks out about her experiences.

YOUTH is wasted on the young, quipped Oscar Wilde – unless, of course, you’re a celebrity tween.

Turbocharged at birth (insert rock-star/model/actor parent here), fashion’s new crop of ones-to-watch are bypassing Instagram avatars and going pro with model agents and major campaigns.

Last month, 16-year-old Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Johnny, made her couture debut in Chanel’s casino-themed A/W ’15/’16 show, draped around roulette tables alongside seasoned A-list ambassadors Kristen Stewart and Julianne Moore.

This, after Kaia Gerber, doppelganger daughter of commercial superstar Cindy Crawford (Forbes’ highest-earning model of 1995), emerged from her mother’s hitherto protective Malibu bubble in an Instagram sneak peek of a beautifully shot (by Steven Meisel) editorial in Vogue Italia.

And rocker Noel Gallagher’s daughter, Anaïs, is signed to the Select agency in London – at 15.

I get it.

They’re exquisite.

The camera (and, by extension, the audience) loves the pillow-lipped, dewy perfection of a fresh face emerging from the childhood chrysalis – all the more when it’s an echo of an established celebrity.

Depp has the feline beauty of her French mother, actor Vanessa Paradis, with a lush swirl of her dad’s part-Cherokee ethnicity.

Gerber’s honeyed, richly chocolate eyes are just like Crawford’s – an unsettlingly sensual projection for a tender-aged 13-year-old.

But placing a young girl centre stage before she’s a woman, vampirising those last, carefree, career-free years of youth, undeniably occupies a grey area.

Would you let your tween daughter model? Ask many mama bears and their eyebrows will raise faster than a Victorian schoolmarm’s – no.

Even Sunday Style fashion director, Kelly Hume – who creates beautiful fashion images for a living – is a thumbs down.

“Young girls are not secure in themselves yet as a person; modelling breeds insecurity. I want my daughter’s self-worth to be measured by virtue, intelligence and confidence at that age, not appearance.”

I did drink from that poisoned chalice as a teen – and I’m glad.

When a study trip to Paris placed me in fashion mecca and I was scouted, law school vanished as the fashion world beckoned in all its glittery glory.

Truth be told, I was temperamentally suited to the gypsy life of a couture model, and the exposure to outrageous, creative people.

I craved glamour, culture and the chance to spread my wings.

I begged my ever protective mother to let me stay on in Europe and she shared my excitement.

At 17 I was just that bit older than many underage models, and it made a world of difference.

A lot of the under-16s had been plucked from Dairy Queens and checkouts in flyover US states and dropped in Paris to sink or swim.

Everything depended on catching the eye of the right designer, editor or photographer – then everyone’s investment in you would start to pay off.

I remember at one fashion week staged in the Louvre during the ’90s, a new 14-year-old catwalk model was complaining about the “hotel”.

“But it’s a museum,” I stammered, in the face of her blanket-blank stare.

“And it was a royal palace and… oh, never mind.” Man, these girls were green, arbitrarily parachuted into the big city from tiny ‘feeder’ agencies.

Everything depended on catching the eye of the right designer, editor or photographer – then everyone’s investment in you would start to pay off.

In the meantime, young girls desperate for approval were sitting ducks for the sleazy playboys who trail models like pilot fish behind whales.

Being older and just that bit wiser, I had enough French verbs, model friends and new gay besties to see out the ’90s paying my own way and writing my own rules.

I feel enriched by the discovery of European culture and cuisine; going to dinner parties in Milan with luminaries like Umberto Eco, dancing with pop stars at Les Bains Douches or riding on the back of Prince Egon von Fürstenberg’s motorbike wearing Moschino fringing #oopsnolawdegree.

Yet I admit I was developmentally warped by modelling – earning heart-surgeon money under 20; being the epicentre of a swarm of adults on a shoot; emotionally investing in the ‘pick-me’ dynamic of casting sessions.

My sense of myself as worthless if I’m not looking my best is a cornerstone of my psyche (hello – I’m a beauty editor).

All the rationalisation and feminism in the world may never completely iron out that kink.

I forgive myself for it, because I emerged into womanhood in a creative playground where visual power is not only a currency, it’s the whole point.