Two weeks ago the news broke that a young South African girl was going to model for the New York Fashion Week. Now it might seem a small issue given the litany of challenges we face as a country, gang rapes of women in Krugersdorp and plague-like levels of gender-based violence as well as misogyny online — why should we worry about a privileged white girl and the fashion industry?

We need to be concerned because it speaks to the danger of our media copying and pasting press releases, it speaks directly to how we conceive and challenge patriarchy that key issues are missed, and it speaks to the critical need to protect respect and deepen the rights of the child.

As a default, we have opted not to name the girl precisely because of the possible ethical issues and we don’t see how it is in her best interests to do so.

There are three key issues about the girl model story. Firstly, and quite unusually, the story accessed the voice and views of the young girl. This is why the story appeared on our radar at Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) as we consistently analyse how the media report on children.

In most stories there were three quotes from the young girl, which was really different, that it was a girl was even more unusual, even for a white girl to be given a voice is rare. MMA’s research shows that children’s voices are heard in only 7% of stories which feature children. So hearing the voice of the young girl seemed really positive.

The second key issue of the story is that it was widely covered, appearing in: The Citizen, News24, IOL, MSN, JacarandaFM, CapeTalk, The Herald as well as a string of standard publicity and fashion sites. It would be amazing to think that our media all saw the story and ran with it because of how unique it was.

Sadly, it would appear that rather than all media picking up and writing their own story they all picked up on a well-written press release. A casual review of the majority of the pieces linked shows just how startlingly similar the text is.

The quotes from the young girl are the same, the “casual” mention that the girl was scouted by “the International Modelling and Talent Association (IMTA) — the largest talent convention in the world” is also repeated in most of the pieces linked, another tell-tale sign of a press release. Similarly, most of the images used were the same, fortunately not overtly sexualised.

In other words, rather than picking up on the story, the media simply picked up and ran with a press release. This is classic churnalism and speaks to how easy it is for spin doctors to get content placed. Sure you might think it’s a “soft” story, but when our media publish content without thinking and applying credible media ethical standards it isn’t journalism — it’s PR dressed as journalism and it undermines the credibility and trust of media. It feeds the trolls who assert that the media all follow a line determined by WMC, the Stellenbosch mafia, Bill Gates or lizards. Perhaps if it was just a soft story it might be more easily ignored, except that there are some key rights issues involved.

The third issue is that the girl model in question is 11 years old. Regardless of where you might stand on the gender dynamics around modelling, what’s important here is that the child is 11 years of age and appearing not at the New York Fashion Week Kids show, but at the New York Fashion Week show — dressed as an adult. It was in a women’s magazine, Woman & Home — not an ostensibly credible journalistic title — that some of the key issues were raised, and unpacked:

“However, the elephant in the room amongst all the excitement asks the contested question. Is 11 too young to enter the fashion industry at that level?

“The topic of child modelling has especially in the last few years become a highly divided one. Some believe that it’s the only way to truly break into the industry. Others think that waiting a few years will save some young models a lot of therapy bills.” — Ashleigh Nefdt, Woman & Home.

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The issues are complex, from different stages of development and the evolving capacity of the child where stories could have addressed whether it is the same for an 11-year-old or a 15- or 16-year-old child to be modelling for an adult fashion show. Or journalists could have asked questions about dressing an 11-year-old to look like an adult for the adult fashion gaze.

Indeed the girl isn’t the first or even the youngest, there has been much excitement about a 10-year-old trans model for the show this year. The focus of most of those pieces was on the issue of trans models — seemingly addressing a key gender and sexuality issue, but glibly evading the reality that they have dressed up a 10-year-old for an adult show.

Making it all more complex are the race issues where in pieces like this on Good Morning America in 2019 where they celebrated another 11-year-old who first walked New York Fashion Week at the age of eight — and nowhere do they talk about her as black, except in reference to her hair, which of course is code for race identification.

Even then her young age is celebrated, not questioned. As Nefdt points out in her story, “Sara Ziff, a model and founder of Model Alliance, famously shared her thoughts. ‘It’s a grown-up industry with grown-up pressures,’ she said as per CNN. A few years back, Vogue published a piece titled Why the Fashion World Needs to Commit to an 18+ Modelling Standard.”

Even if our media had ignored these elements, a simple search on some of the social media platforms reveals a series of images of the 11-year-old South African girl as an adult in sexualised poses and clothing.

Combatting gender-based violence is more than simply condemning rapes when they happen, dismantling patriarchy is more than simply calling it out on social media. We need to be critiquing and seeking the views of experts about how we see women and what constitutes beauty.

It’s essential we do these things not just because of our levels of gender-based violence, but because they are intimately linked to violence against children. Is sexualising a child as a model okay because the child and the child’s caregivers say it’s OK?

Our failure to question and interrogate these popular culture issues gives licence to adults to sexualise and victimise and harass women online. When our media fail to do their jobs, to question, to not simply copy and paste, it isn’t just their credibility that suffers — the rights of our most marginalised are undermined as well. DM

William Bird is director of Media Monitoring Africa (MMA).