Everyone thinks their own children are adorable — cute enough for commercials, TV or movies. But when it comes down to it, we don’t push our wee ones to start an acting career — well, most of us don’t.
Recently I met a woman with a nine-month-old baby. The baby was cute; not striking or even adorable — just cute. But this woman was obsessed with getting her child into commercials.
The baby had professional headshots done at two months old, and has had a new set of pictures shot every six to eight weeks since then. We are talking about thousands and thousands of dollars being spent on pro pictures…of a baby.
I take a lot of photos of my own kids. So much so that whenever my two-year-old son does anything even slightly cute or cool, he says, “Mom, picture?”
But the point is that I take photographs myself for family memories, not for commercials.
Now, I guess someone has to do it or else there would be no babies available to star in ads. But I can’t justify a middle-class family paying thousands of dollars for headshots so that their little one can hit it big with a diaper ad.
My friend-of-a-friend is also enrolling her baby in acting classes when she turns two. I don’t know about you, but I’d probably wait until the child can at least talk.
