Modeling 101

I think we had been in Korea about 2 weeks when one day we were walking to the PX from our house in 12 feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures, each of us mumbling about how we hated everybody else when we were approached by a Korean lady. Actually, we were walking one way and she was on the other side of the street and she started screaming "Oh, Hello!" over and over while trying to cross the road and not get run over by the taxis that routinely go 70 mph, rain, shine, or 12 feet of snow.

She then proceeded to ask me if she could take some pictures of my kids. Now see, this might bother some people, but we got used to this type of behavior from Asians when we lived in Hawaii and had two small, blonde children who tanned very nicely. Back in those days we went to the beach almost every day and spent hours having Asians walk up to us, hand us their camera, and then go stand beside our children and smile. That was about the same time Ashlyn and Haley became masters at getting their picture taken. No matter what else is going on, you say "Smile" and they snap to attention and make an awesome picture. Then along came Owen who, if it is possible, takes a better picture than his older sisters. Finally, along came Skylar, and it all went to hell in a handbasket quicker than you can say "Obama Health Care Reform".

Anyway, this lady is babbling about how the kids should model and she's an agent and SMILE! SMILE! SMILE! I'd heard of this from several people, that agents would approach you and try to represent your kids, because they want good, clean American kids selling clothes to Koreans. "Look! If you wear these clothes you will look just like this blonde, tanned American kid with bright blue eyes!" And they fall for it hook, line and sinker, much like I fall for it EVERY SINGLE TIME I buy something from the Victoria's Secret catalog.

So she took the pictures of Haley, because she pulled a tape measure out of her purse and measured Ashlyn and decided she was too tall. She called me two days later and said Haley was squinting in the picture so she needed to take another one, and could she come to the house sometime. I said sure, just give me a call whenever, what else do I have to do anyway, and that was that. Since then we've been approached by two other people who took pictures of all 4 kids, and really I'd forgotten about it because it's just not important to me for them to model.

Well, they called for Ashlyn. There was a company, the Korean lady said, called "Peer Garden", who chose Ashlyn to model some of their clothes and could we make it? We didn't have anything planned and Ashlyn said she wanted to try it out so I took her and off we went. And the whole time we were waiting for Ashlyn to get finished with hair and make-up I had a conversation with another parent (there were two girls and two boys) about exactly which company it was the children were modeling for. I would like to say before I finish this story that I feel totally vindicated about this because this other parent, who is in the military herself and is a very high ranking person in the medical field and therefore extremely bright, also heard "Peer Garden" and also had never heard of it before, but gosh the clothes hanging over there are really cute and a little expensive looking.

So there were two hair and make-up people, and each child had their own handler-type person who followed them around and helped them get dressed and hung up the cute, expensive looking clothes when the kids took them off and left them in a wad on the floor. There were also two or three seamstresses there pinning and sewing if needed; I'm not really sure how many of them there were because they kept moving and boy do these people look alike here. On top of that there was a photographer and two of his assistants, along with about three other people who seemed to have no responsibilities whatsoever except to comment and ooh and ahh. And they gave us fruit and breads and bagels and something resembling cream cheese, which I decided immediately not to eat because I'VE TOTALLY FALLEN FOR THAT BEFORE SINCE I'VE BEEN HERE, and we're sitting on comfy couches reading fashion magazines like Vogue and another parent comes up and mentions that her son modeled for this company for their last shoot back in the fall. At that point the second parent asks "Oh really, well what is the name? Peer something? We couldn't really understand..." And the lady starts laughing and says "Oh, that's just the Koreans not understanding the way Americans stress their words. It's not Peer Garden. It's Pierre Cardin."

What? Pierre Cardin? Like, in Italy and France and IN THIS VOGUE MAGAZINE? Good Lord. So I acted totally cool about it, probably most likely because I was thinking that maybe that really WAS cream cheese after all. Oh, and Ashlyn (Ash-a-leen as they liked to call her) help model their spring line for what I'm assuming will be some of their print ads. And she got money and a free pair of shoes while I ate croissants and drank sparkling grape juice.

I am such a pimp. But hey, life is good for a pimp.