Profile
Name:
Alyson Whitman
Age: 14
School: Freshman at Billings Senior
Favorite movie: \"
Romy and
Michele\'s High School
Reunion\"
Favorite TV shows: \"The O.C.\" and \"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer\"
Favorite book: \"
Ella Enchanted\" by
Gail Carson Levine
Favorite musical groups: Reel
Big Fish,
Don\'t Look Down,
The Beatles
Favorite food: \"
don\'t really have any, but bagels are pretty good.\"
Aly, as her
friends and family call her, is a 14-year-old Billings Senior
student. For the most part,
she\'s your run-of-the-mill freshman: she enjoys soccer, takes
dance lessons and plays
piano; she spends part of her day at the freshman
academy at
Lincoln Center (she doesn\'t much care for it,
by the way); she
eats well (but no
red meat, thank you).
Her shoulder-length
blond hair, sky-blue eyes and
bright smile don\'t distinguish her from others her age. Through the
lens of a camera, however, she has what those in the modeling
industry call \"the look,\" and that \"look\" has landed her in the
pages of a
national fashion magazine.
Four full-color, full-page photos of Aly\'s modeling work appeared in the
March issue of CosmoGIRL! (That\'s her on pages 137, 141, 142 and 147.)
The daylong shoot was her first as a working model. It was a first of another
sort, she said, as friends at school
found out about her
unique job.
"
People really didn't know much about it," she said in a recent interview,
somewhat reluctant to talk much about
herself. "It was a
big deal for about
a week, but it's better now."
Aly began taking
runway and
commercial workshops from Lynette
Michael when Michael owned
Creative World, a Billings model and
talent agency. After she sold the
agency a year
ago, Michael continued to work with Aly to
help her get noticed by a wider number of
people.
When Aly, with the
blessing of her mother,
Linda Gardner, signed with
Elite Model Management New York last
summer, Michael said it was the culmination of years of work for both she and Aly.
Last July, they attended the Millie
Lewis American Model and
talent Conference in
Orlando, Fla. The nearly 5-foot, 11-inch Aly walked
the runway, posed for photos and did camera work for TV commercials. At
the end of the convention, she was being pursued by some of the top model agencies in
the world, including
Next, T Model and
Elite of New
York; Nous Model and LA Model of
Los Angeles; Cinq Duex Un and World Top in
Tokyo; and the
Fashion Model Management
Spa in
Milano,
Italy.
A 2003 poll done by Models.com showed that Elite and Next were among the top five women's modeling agencies in New York. Elite has more than 700 fashion models working
around the world. Elite models have included actress
Lara Flynn Boyle and
Lauren Bush, niece of
President Bush.
"I had an idea (for a career) today," she said. "It was like an
epiphany. But I forgot it."