Observations on models

My mother had a couple of dread fears about what I might be when I grew up. The first was a secretary - although, now the internet has utterly replaced "Take this down, Ms Millard", that noble profession for the laydeez is clearly headed for the paper shredder. In the case of her other bugbear, quite the opposite is true. It seems heretical to write it, but in the 1980s my mother was determined that I should have no ambition whatsoever to become a model. In those days wanting to be a model was, to the likes of my mother, who was a bluestocking haematologist, an utterly stupid aim. Twiggy and The Shrimp had clearly had a fun time, but that was more about the liberal Sixties than anything else.

How charmingly outmoded her fears seem now. What with Alexander McQueen's "We Love You Kate" T-shirts - certain to be the popular slogan de nos jours - and all major news outlets treating Kate Moss's drug habits as though they were important to the public interest, it is abundantly clear that modelling is considered a serious and laudable ambition for a young woman. Across the board, we are being encouraged to applaud grossly overpaid people whose only skill is to wear clothes elegantly and enjoy talking about eyeliner.

Once, people looked up to Roald Dahl and his quirky stories. Now we fawn over Sophie Dahl, who, we learn, has managed to slim down to a size 8. Once, Richard Scarry hoped to encourage children to read with his anarchic Lowly Worm books.

Now we are encouraged to admire his granddaughter and heiress Olympia, whose vapidity in a recent interview about shoes, bags and - yes! - modelling was astonishing.

This model mania is apparent, too, in the coverage of the murder of 18-year-old Sally Anne Bowman. One reason her death has received so much attention is that she was a model, who, "like Kate Moss", came from Croydon (although, unlike Kate, Sally Anne's career had only just got going). Any murder, particularly of a young person, is horrific; but the fact that Sally Anne was a model has been brandished as if it makes the story more poignant.

Her family seems to accept this. Her mother has said she hopes Sally Anne's photograph might appear posthumously on the front cover of Vogue. "If that could be made possible, all her dreams would come true," said Mrs Bowman in the Telegraph. What? After being murdered?

Surely we need a sense of perspective on this. "Making it" on to the front of a monthly glossy devoted to selling clothes and make-up seems a particularly grim but modern way of coming to terms with a tragedy such as this.

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