Age and career appropriate modeling to be aggressively addressed with saturated, long term online campaign.

What is coming will not make us popular with some people, but we don’t care. It is the right thing to do, and it needs to be addressed.
We care about models, and what happens to models and their modeling careers, even if they don’t, or are too ignorant to know what they are doing.
We also think that photography, especially when it deals with models, talent, and people, is dangerous, and that it needs to be regulated, like any high-risk business.
The following is also our opinion.
Teen modeling web sites and models being exploited have been an industry scourge for decades, and ever since modeling moved onto the Internet. Modeling job boards and online classified sites have been filled with modeling “job” offers which are, literally, not good for models.
Lawmakers have been unable to address this, too, as this is technically legal. It doesn’t make it right, however, and where lawmakers failed, we will succeed; we have the experience, education, and the tactics to effectively address this.
Modeling jobs need to be age appropriate. Teen models have no business posing provocatively or modeling things such as string bikinis. Is there money to be made in this? Yes. Is it worth it? No. Is it healthy modeling, or a mainstream modeling career? NO! We have met many models whom are young adults, most of whom are no longer modeling, who have fallen into this trap, of modeling age inappropriately when they were younger, and they ALL have told us that, while they made good money in the sort term, that it ruined their lives. Seriously.
Additionally, models need to be modeling services or products (i.e. Be the face of the marketing of a business, for example) which is NOT a conflict with the marketability of their modeling careers, and NOT be the product itself (that is where it becomes adult work, and becomes exploitive). There are a lot of insecure women out there who simply do not know what they are doing and do not have good judgement about this, and allow shady photographers to talk them into taking their clothes off and becoming their own product (there is often a fine line between actual art and exploitation. You have to know what you are doing, and you have to have good judgement. Many out there will use the term “art” to justify whatever they want to do, especially if it is at the expense of others. EXPLOITATION IS NOT ART!).
Context is also critical. Models have to be very careful that the context of their modeling work is solid, and that the pictures cannot easily be taken out of context and used for something that they would never have agreed to.
THESE situations are where modeling and photography become dangerous. Simply put, pictures are forever, literally. Once they are taken and the model signs a release, they have NO CONTROL over how those pictures will be used. Those pictures also cannot be undone, EVER.
What is to say that the photographer, too, can’t claim that the pictures were posted online and were stolen, and that he, or she, is not responsible for them being used in ways that the model is against? When is someone actually absolved of responsibility? Does the photographer even know what they are doing? Can you trust the photographer? Can models pay for not only their mistakes, but the mistakes of photographers?
These are all very good questions, and any smart professional has no choice but to ask them. THINK before you DO. KNOW what you are doing before you DO it!
Any modeling or photography carries with it a certain level of risk. The trick is to be able to weigh out those risks and make the best decision for your career and for your personal life. That “anything goes” attitude being thrown around on social media ends careers before they have a chance to begin and ruins lives; it is reckless, ignorant, and professionally irresponsible!
People do not take the time and pay their dues by working with qualified, experienced professionals to learn and to know what they are doing. They network with other amateurs and learn their mistakes, and are conditioned to accept those mistakes as the way that the industry works (they also defend and support their exploiters, showing their lack of experience and judgement). Worse yet, many of these amateurs are insecure and compromise, lying, cheating, and stealing. There are too many amateurs out there misleading people by portraying themselves as professionals or as having more experience than they actually do, and this is not only fraud, but it make them a scam! Faking until you make it is not professional, is not ethical, and it hurts everyone involved.
Case in point: Several years ago, some models modeled for a photographer in the Tampa Bay area, which seems to be, in our opinion, the worldwide capital of modeling scams. The pictures taken were innocent, innocuous swimsuit photographs. There is nothing wrong with that, right? Well, normally, no, if the models were being paid to model swimsuits for a swimsuit company and the model release locked the use to that specifically. That was not the case here, however. What the photographer did next hurt the models, though, and there was nothing that the models could do about it. He lied to them and misrepresented what he was going to do with the pictures (if anyone is dishonest about anything, they will be dishonest and unethical about other things. You cannot trust them!). The photographer, with signed releases in hand, sold the pictures to adult businesses to be used in ads, and those models turned up in ads promoting businesses that they would have never agreed to do. The use was also a conflict of interest with the marketing of their careers, and many of them lost work over it. Worse yet, the models were NOT PAID for their modeling work, because the shoots were done as TFP, or trade. The photographer, of course, made money at their expense (even if the models were cool with how the pictures were going to be used, if the photographer makes money, so should the models. Don’t be exploited, in this case, a second time, as free labor for something that directly makes someone money! This is how those fashion shows, supposedly for “charity”, scam and exploit models, and it is one of the ways that models can be scammed this way! We will also be fighting these scams!).
Don’t be those models. This is a business which has risks, and you have a responsibility to educate yourself and know what you are doing before you do it!
What you do in modeling and photography may be legal as defined by the law, but in many cases, it is being used as a legal form of something that you may not agree with.
Florida Models and our sister sites will be fighting this (A prelude to this came in September, 2012, when we took ownership of Florida Models, and we cut off things such as teen modeling job offers from our job board). Our upcoming next-generation talent resource sites will fight this. All of our modeling job boards will fight this. We even have several web sites in development, right now, which will specifically address this, and do nothing but that.
It needs to be done, and it will be done.