Teenage Swimsuit Models

The Reality of Teenage Swimsuit Models

Most legitimate swimsuit models who are in their teens are eighteen or nineteen and thus legal. They might look younger, but a respectable modeling agency does not want to court any problems or false perceptions.

Many young models are used in advertisements in a way that some people find alarming, but a girl made up to look much older selling perfume or cosmetics is very different from an underage girl modeling even the most modest swimsuit. The bulk of catalogs these days prefer to show pictures of age-appropriate swimsuits without any models at all, thus avoiding possible controversy. It is unfortunate but true that there are many people looking to take advantage of teens, so parents need to be involved and vigilant.

Teenage Models and Online Predators

If you do a Google search for “teenage swimsuit models,” many of the links that come up are very alarming, especially if you’re a parent of a teenage girl. The Internet has made it much easier for pedophiles to get closer to their potential targets. The administrators on popular teen sites such as MySpace and Facebook strongly discourage users from posting pictures of themselves dressed scantily or posing suggestively.

Recent surveys show that their efforts are paying off, and relatively few girls put up pictures of themselves in swimsuits. The message seems to be getting out: there are people out there ready to prey upon girls online, and the less a girl is wearing in her online profile, the more vulnerable she is assumed to be.

Obviously, a smart girl and her parents will act immediately if there seems to be some suspicious contact, but online predators know a lot of tricks too so it’s best to give them as little as possible to work with.

Ads Seeking Models

Predators and pornographers have always taken advantage of the huge numbers of pretty girls who want to be models. To that end, there have always been ads in papers seeking new models, “no experience necessary.”

The Internet makes it far easier for such people to lure unsuspecting young girls with ads that look harmless on Craig’s List and similar pages. To their great credit, Craig’s List works hard to monitor such ads and is quick to take them down and ban the user from coming back, but the sheer number of ads makes it difficult for them to catch everything as fast as parents would like.

It’s up to parents to pay attention and teach their daughters to recognize such ads for the dangerous scams they are. It isn’t easy since many of the ads on Craig’s List are legitimate, but when someone is seeking an inexperienced teenage swimsuit model, it’s safer to assume they are not prepared to act in the teenager’s best interests.

Parents Must Stay Involved

Parents of girls who have the looks to become models have to be extra-vigilant and do a lot of research into every potential job. The best way to become a model is still the old-fashioned way: via a respectable agency. If you want to end up in the pages of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, look into which agencies represent the models, and then approach them yourself. Stay smart, and good luck!