Baby Beauty Kings – Matthew

BBC Three · TV Week · 23 Aug 2010 · by: BBC

Baby Beauty Queens is renamed Baby Beauty Kings this week to follow the story of Matthew, an eight-year-old boy who is determined to break into the competitive world of child modelling.

The youngest of four boys, eight-year-old Matthew isn't interested in football or computer games. More than anything else in the world, he wants to be a model. Matthew's parents feel that, since they support his brothers' interests in music and football, they must do the same for Matthew's less conventional passions and sign him up with a child model agency.

"I've got my reservations about it, you know," says Matthew's mum. "I don't want him going to a model casting and not getting the job and then thinking 'oh, is it because I don't look nice enough?' The modelling industry's a judgment on how you look. It's just something that he really wants to do, and it's all he talks about."

This film follows Matthew's journey from a quiet rural village to the competitive world of child modelling – a world very different from the catwalks of Matthew's imagination.

Part of BBC Three's Adult Season, Landmark Films' Baby Beauty Queens series explores the pressures on young people to grow up too quickly by shining a spotlight on life for aspiring pageant queens and child models in image-obsessed Britain.