Quite a few months ago, maybe it was in October or November, Kenedy posted this picture on her instagram account. She got a lot of messages from her family and friends admiring the picture and how pretty she looks. She also got a message from a modeling agency telling her what a great picture it was and asking how tall she is and if they could Direct Message her. It seemed a little shady to us but Kenedy said OK and they said they were a modeling agency based in Portland and they were coming to Boise in December to scout new models and wanted Kenedy to come to the scouting. It was on a Sunday and Kenedy let them know that unfortunately that was not going to work for her and explained about her beliefs. They understood and said they were coming back in January and will be here on a Monday if that works better. After talking it over we thought it would be OK, I had to be at the meeting with her because she is not 18, but really, I would have gone with her anyway because that is how I roll. It all seemed OK but we were still not sure what this what all about.
We were the first ones to arrive and they had Kenedy fill out an info sheet while we were waiting for other kids to get there. Once all the potential models arrived we met the owners of the agency and they explained what they do and how the agency worked with models. They then measured each kids to see how tall they were and then took a "mugshot" of each kid with their info sheet.
When Kenedy was getting her picture taken Darren, the co owner, saw her name and recognized it from her instagram account and mentioned how hard they had to work to get her there. They seemed to really like her. After taking a few minutes to privately look these pictures and info sheets over they thanked everyone for coming and then excused 3 of the kids saying they would not be able to find work for them. The rest of the kids, I think there were about 6, they said they wanted to talk to individually about what they saw for their modeling future. Since Kenedy and I were the first to arrive we got to go in with Darren and Tiffany first.
They told us how excited they were about Kenedy and how beautiful she is. They essentially said they could get her work in the Northwest region that they specialize in but they also see her as being a very successful international model. I talked to them about my concerns with this industry and our morals and they seemed OK with it all and said Kenedy would never be put in a situation or even an outfit that she was not morally comfortable in. Basically they made us feel comfortable and I felt fine about it all.
After going home to get some outfits we went back so they could take some digitals of Kenedy for a model info sheet to put on their website for clients to look at. It was a lot of fun watching Kenedy get her photos taken and Tiffany was super complementary of her the entire time she was taking the pictures. She was really good at putting her at ease and making her feel special.
Since then we have had another meeting with them where they talked to Kenedy again about their desire for her to do international modeling but that was something they could wait until she was 18 to explore if she wanted. Kenedy told me later that she was good with just doing modeling in the northwest region if she happened to get jobs but that doing the international stuff or even making modeling a career was not in her future plans. I love that Kenedy has her head on straight and is open to opportunities but keeps her focus on her goals.
I did ask Tiffany how they found Kenedy and she says that they used to have to go to county fairs and malls to scout for potential models but with social media they look up High Schools in different areas and find their different sports teams pages and branch out from there following hashtags and friends. She said it is like a big spiderweb connecting and following and searching. It seems pretty complicated but made a lot of sense.
We don't know if really anything will come of this but we will take it for what it is and if something comes along that is great but it not that is fine also.