Baby's First Open Casting Call!

Fragrant Junior is pretty. Often mistaken for a girl, his wide smile, bright personality, and forever squishable thighs make him a compact ball of magnetism and charisma. "Wow, he looks like he should be in a magazine!" is a comment that has made his shy, retiring mother blush demurely many a time.

So, for shits and giggles, today I took Baby to a baby open casting call at FancySchmancy Street. A dozen other babies had the same idea, and dragged their moms and grandmas along. There was one dad, too!

We all filed into a small room -- Baby and I snagged a front row seat -- and the owner of the talent agency gave us an overview of How It All Works. As I understand, here are the three most important points:

1. The agency acts as a middleman between the advertisers and the product (/baby).
2. Success is based upon the 40/60 ratio: 40% is how beautiful baby is, and 60% is "workability" -- how well s/he can be bribed to sit still for minutes at a time.
3. One needs a car to get to auditions.

Once the agency decides to accept the baby as a model (not guaranteed, of course), the parents would have to send baby's updated photos to the agency every few months, because the little peanuts grow up so quickly, don't they. So then, if, say, Carters wants a boy model who fits in 12-18 month clothes and has fabulous hair (ahem), the agency would call its clients and ask if they can go to the audition. If yes, there may or may not be a call back. Rates vary from $60 per hour to $800+ for really big projects. All up to the advertisers!

After the explanation, we each met with the owner and/or the Baby Manager. I had brought along five pictures of Baby (one above), and to my surprise, the manager pointed to the one that I thought was the weakest of the bunch. "This is the type of photo we would want," she said. "It shows his face." (Note: all the other ones showed his face, but he always had a prop -- a shark bathrobe, sunglasses, etc. Apparently this is Not Good.)

We were thanked for our time, and sent off into the wild hot yonder.

Looking back, I think that, as adorbs as my offspring is, he had some serious competition in there. "Everyone thinks they have a beautiful baby," the owner had said. "When you go to an audition, you'll see that many people have beautiful babies." (Although he might become a model just because over 70% of the babies in there were girls, yay statistical probability!)

And thus endeth our beauty adventure!

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This post brought to you by teething! Teething: the most likely reason your previously good sleeper becomes a howling maniac at 4 am!