In Brazil, a Trend Away From Super-Young Models
After Anorexia Death, Fashion Week Closes Catwalks to Those Under 16

By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 7, 2007

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, vans and buses full of aspiring models brake to a stop here in front of the unmarked offices of the Daphne Agency. Coming from small towns scattered across the Brazilian countryside, the hopefuls have spent hours on the road, often accompanied by the local scouts who first spotted them.

The other day, an angular assortment of arms, legs and oversize sunglasses spilled out onto the sidewalk from one of those vans -- six teenage girls and one boy, all of them full of runway dreams and a few well-worn facts about Brazil's modeling industry.

Fact number one: Gisele Bundchen left her home in southern Brazil at age 14 to start working, and now Forbes magazine calls her the planet's richest supermodel. Fact number two: The only Brazilian model to win the Ford modeling agency's "Supermodel of the World" competition -- Camila Finn -- achieved the feat in 2004 when she was 13.

Youth pays, in other words, and everyone here knows it.

"I've wanted to be a model since I was 5," said Jessica Neuhaus, a 15-year-old Daphne Agency talent, who recently moved away from her family in a small town and now lives with three other models in this intimidating metropolis. "All the girls I grew up with wanted to be models, just like all the boys wanted to be soccer players."

But the search for ever-younger models in Brazil has sparked soul-searching within the fashion industry, resulting in some self-policing on the catwalks. The country's biggest annual industry event, Sao Paulo Fashion Week, this year instituted its first age limit, declaring its runways off-limits to models younger than 16. Such restrictions are already enforced in Paris and Milan.

"As soon as Fashion Week announced it was doing that, it started a trend that will now be followed everywhere in Brazil," said Anderson Meyer, marketing director for Daphne, which has 900 models under contract. "It's going to have a very big impact on the industry."

The directors of Fashion Week, which ended last week, imposed the limit after months of intense debate within Brazilian society about the modeling industry's role in a string of fatalities apparently related to eating disorders. In November, 21-year-old Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died of complications due to starvation. Over the following weeks, five other young Brazilian women died after reportedly struggling with anorexia.

Fashion Week organizers said they decided to impose an age limit to protect the health of young models, whose bodies are still developing. But for some of the girls, who had been looking forward to their first big show, the decision was a letdown.

"It was disappointing, of course," said Stephany Barros, 14, who had been promised a spot on the catwalk before the restriction was announced. "But I can understand why they did it. It's good in a certain way, because younger models sometimes have misconceptions about how thin they should be, and what they should do to lose weight."

According to some modeling agents, the age restriction is already producing results. Because of the sudden evaporation of work opportunities for younger models, Sao Paulo-based agent Raphael Garcia said the average signing age for his models immediately jumped from 14 to 15.

Like most of the agencies at this year's Fashion Week, Garcia's firm, One Models Brazil, underscored in its promotional materials the services it offers to its younger clients, such as the nutritionist and personal trainer hired to live with models in the agency's apartments in Sao Paulo.

The Daphne Agency touted similar services and announced plans to open a kind of academy for its young models. Adults will be assigned to live with the girls in their apartments, including someone who will provide them with breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. The adults will attempt to teach the girls the skills many simply haven't had time to learn -- how to manage their diets and health care, for example.

According to Roberta Rizzardi, who heads Daphne's "new faces" department, a lot of girls who sign with Sao Paulo modeling agencies are incredibly raw, completely unprepared for big-city life in an industry that has its share of pressures and predators.

"They often call me, just because they want a shoulder to cry on," said Rizzardi, who estimated that she evaluates about 200 aspiring models a week. "They don't want to talk about the business, necessarily, but just about what they did last night."

In a country with one of the highest rates of economic inequality in the world, many parents are willing to let their daughters take a chance in the industry, said Meyer, Daphne's marketing director. The potential payoff is seen as worth the risk of separating from their children.

"The social problems we have in Brazil mean that many families are willing to let their 13-year-old daughters move to Sao Paulo and live with people they've never met," Meyer said. "But this is why there are more top models now from Brazil and Russia than anywhere. It would be very unusual for a mother in a country like France to do something like that. We see it every single day here."

Bundchen, who returned to Brazil last month to attend a fashion show in Rio de Janeiro, was quoted by Brazil's O Globo newspaper as faulting a lack of support from families for the health problems among the country's young models.

"I never had this problem, because I had a strong family base," said Bundchen, 26. "Parents are responsible, not the fashion industry."

At the Fashion Week shows, organizers distributed health pamphlets for models and held a question-and-answer session for concerned parents. Bell Kranz, a journalist who covers health, conducted the session, and said that one parent -- the only father who attended -- wanted reassurance that he was not being overbearing by accompanying his 16-year-old daughter to modeling events held outside their home town.

"He said, 'I won't leave my daughter under any circumstance. Am I doing the right thing?' " Kranz said. "He was really worried, and I tried to assure him, 'Yes! It's absolutely the right thing to do.' "