As a pro, by default that's what shooting with you is.įrom a career point of view shooting minors is less the problem than shooting minors or would be models of any age, who are not competitive and are not going to work, who are not with a creditable agency already or ready to walk in and sign. ![]() Minors do not have the right to engage a person in a business enterprise. ![]() If you meet a potential client and they turn out to be underage you tell them it's been great meeting but any further communications must be initiated by their parents. Something akin to if I punch a guy and break his jaw, oops, if a pro kick boxer in the same location under the same circumstances punches a guy and breaks his jaw- it's assault with a deadly weapon. Very sad.While everyone is handing out their two cents.Ī professional photographer simply can not shoot minors for fun like anyone else can. What a sordid world and how callous human beings can be. "Ugh" is how I feel having watched this documentary. As for the men who run the agencies, I have two words: "pedophile pimps". And cold-hearted it may sound but I truly hope she never actually has one, god forbid a daughter. ![]() Does she have any friends? Who would want to hang out with her? She mentions wanting a baby - but would anyone actually date her?. Her morals have clearly collapsed in the face of an obvious selfish drive to make money. She has a horrible lack of depth, acknowledging but then brushing aside the seedy side of the industry she feeds, even going so far as to refer to prostitution as "normal". She is clearly not healthy in the body, nor the head. Ashley has obviously been psychologically damaged by her own time in the modeling industry (and possible dabble into other sideline activities - prostitution, perhaps? - which she alludes to by mentioning she had been a "bad girl"), a fact that is borne out physically in the form of a large cyst and fibroid she has to have surgically removed. The perpetrators of what, in my opinion, amounts to borderline child abuse are Ashley Arbaugh, the scout responsible for finding the pre-pubescent girls and Noah and "Messiah", the agency owners she passes them on to. The parents are oblivious to the truth of the situation into which their daughters are being sent, and I'd like to think the moms and dads give themselves enough of a hard time for falling for the lies, and believing in the dream that didn't (and rarely does) come true once it all does become clear upon their daughters' return. So who's to blame for all of this - does the fault lie with the parents for sending their children off, unescorted, into the blue? I don't think so- they have been promised a dream, a future, financial rewards, which in reality are unlikely to materialize, but should they be blamed for hoping for the best? Ashley (see below), in one of her scouting pitches, claims no model fails in Japan and they won't return in debt as they would if they are sent anywhere else, which is clearly - and she knows it! - a lie. To make it all the more morally repugnant, having endured being repeatedly reviewed/rejected/reviewed/rejected/reviewed/rejected, they are sent home, not with thousands of dollars in their bank accounts, but IN DEBT to the agencies that "represent" (pimp) them. These young, hopeful, innocent girls are plucked from their surroundings and dropped into the ruthless, heartless, abusive world of modeling with no support system in place, where (shockingly, to me) women as much as men treat them as insentient "things", products that they can push, prod and pick apart. ![]() If we (adult viewers) aren't completely clear as to who certain people are, or what exactly is going on, then we can safely assume that a 13 year old girl from Siberia, who speaks neither English nor Japanese, and has no parents to help, would not know either - and that's the point. The lack of action, human interaction (other than with unfriendly agency/magazine people), and the tedium of the documentary all perfectly mirror the experience the girls themselves go through. Unlike other reviewers who feel the directors skimmed the surface and left too much out, I disagree: by remaining quiet and distant (although thankfully they apparently did step in when the child models were in obvious need of help, which was not being provided by anyone else) they perfectly capture the solitary confusion, neglect, and loneliness that the girls face. I don't write many reviews but sadness and anger have prompted me to start typing. I feel as shocked and repulsed as I would had I just watched a documentary on child pornography, which frankly, isn't too far removed from what I have just seen.
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