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My niece came for lunch today. The beautiful one. She is six, and has already appeared in TV ads, clothing catalogues and had a portfolio when she was a fetus. OK, maybe I exaggerate a little, but she really is pretty. The discussion turned to her current shoot coming up soon, and my wife’s parents and sister looked uneasily over at our three. They all had varying degrees of snotty noses, randomly selected old clothes and uncombed hair.
"Errr, Jonah could maybe pose for a shot?" Was the best they could muster, picking the one child who seems to adopt photographic poses for every activity. And I remembered a discussion that we as parents had had about each of them when they were babies. We loved babies. Very occasionally, and even more infrequently depending on how many you have, you sometimes look at them sitting smiling in a patch of sunlight, and you think heeeey, that kid is cute!
The discussion mainly involved the values of placing a child in the media. In a room full of people there to focus on the child’s looks. About whether or not it would give them an over-inflated opinion of themselves. Whether or not we could make them work and spend the money ourselves with a clear conscience. That said, I know some people start college funds for their children with media money.
In the end, we never did go that route. Could be the endless snotty noses ruined their chances, or that we just lacked the energy to follow up.
Can’t claim it was for any noble reason. Having discussed the negative side of having children in the media, we happily wrote about every runny poo, dot of puke and misplaced word in our respective blogs. I suppose we thought that they were fair game.
On the one hand, if we get around to preserving those old entries, they will have as full a record as possible of their dysfunctional childhoods. On the other, they could have as full a record, etc, etc…
It was a bit of a gamble. At some stage in the future, they’ll either thank us for creating a verbal memory box, or they’ll blab it all out to the therapist.
What would you do? Put your children in commercials? Spend the money? Keep the money? If you are the parents of Zack and Cody, Drew Barrymore or Miley Cyrus I hope I haven’t offended you…
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