Child model

A child model refers to a child who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art, such as photography, painting and sculpture.

Practice

Artists have used children as models for countless works over the centuries. Child modeling has become a distinct activity because of the explosion of commercial media over the past several decades. Many young actresses, notably, Katherine Heigl, Lindsay Lohan, Zendaya, Bella Thorne, Katie Dickinson and Brooke Shields began as child models. The book, Lisanne: A Young Model, described the life of Lisanne Falk, a colleague of Brooke Shields at the Ford modeling agency in the late 1970s. Falk, like Shields, was a relatively successful child model who posed for magazine covers, notably Seventeen, for editorial fashion layouts, and for advertising in magazines and mail-order catalogs. Both models appeared in the 1977 Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs. Falk, like Shields, moved from modeling to movies as she became older. More recently Australian child model Morgan Featherstone has achieved worldwide success but has also attracted criticism due to her looking older than her age.