万花筒 Kaleidoscope2007-09-20&09-21, 十三岁走上T型台（在线收听）

Script:

Runway model is getting a good look. She was the face of an Australian fashion event, but there is just one thing—she first started walking the cat-walk when she was only 12 years old. And the question is, is that too young? Here’s NBC’s Net Colt

Too thin. Last year the furor in fashion was about size that a stereo size zero which might exist on but almost never off the cat-walk. This year, this fresh-faced Australian model seems to have it all. She is tall, razor thin and moves like a gazelle.

I can fit into women’s clothes. I can model women’s clothes. So I should be able to do it. But Maddison Gabriel is in junior high and started modeling when she was just 12. She turned 13 on Sunday. But she models clothes for women twice or three times her age. Last year, politicians waded into the size dispute. And this year is no different.

I’d think kids should be allowed to be kids for as long as possible.

It raises questions of whether it makes sense for adults to use children as fashion role models. But they have, for years. Many supermodels got their start at just 14 and there're issues of exploitation, pressure, immaturity.

Now I have a 13-year-old niece and I get chills when I think about it. There's plenty of 14-year-old girls on the runway right now. I just don’t think people ever really thought about it or discussed it.

Maddison’s mother says her daughter can be both a girl and a young woman.

Well, these babies are on TV, aren’t they? Doing commercials. You tell me, what, what is too young?

Here in Britain the group that oversees the fashion industry has an answer to the question of how young is too young. Advising designers not to allow anyone under 16 on the cat-walk. Maddison doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. Her fashion statement: ‘It doesn’t matter what age, it matters that you can do the job.’ For today, Net Colt, NBC news. London.