The debate on size in the fashion industry is well-trodden ground, but does age matter?

Last year Julia Roberts inadvertently became the poster girl for both Lancôme, and for the banning of misleading digital retouching in advertising. In July 2011 LibDem MP Jo Swinson succeeded in having a campaign for the cosmetics company featuring Roberts banned, after the Advertising Standards Agency upheld her claim that the flawless skin in the image was down to airbrushing, and not the product.

The ad, for Teint Miracle foundation, shows Roberts, who at the time of shooting was 43, retouched to the point of resembling an anime character more than a human woman, never mind one in her forties. Devoid of wrinkles and shadows, she looked literally half her age, something that can be achieved only with digital manipulation, or an actual miracle.

Ironically, this attempt to conceal any signs that Roberts has in fact aged since her teens brought the issue of age, and the fashion and beauty industry’s perverse attitude towards it, into sharp relief.

As if to emphasise the point, two weeks later images of ten-year-old Thylane Blondeau pouting her way through a spread in Vogue Paris, sprawled across a tiger skin rug in heels and plunging necklines, sparked debate about the use of increasingly young models. While the use of Blondeau in the adult edition of the magazine (she has previously graced the cover of Vogue Enfants – yes, it exists) was, thus far, an isolated incident, it brought into question the regular use of models only a couple of years older.

The stars of the Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs Autumn/Winter campaigns were actresses Hailee Steinfeld and Elle Fanning, who at the time of shooting were aged 14 and 13 respectively. These may be the lower-priced and more youth-oriented diffusion lines of Prada and Marc Jacobs, but the prices of these labels still indicate that they are firmly aimed at adult women with adult incomes and lifestyles, who are thus being invited to aspire to the look of children.

The use of very young models by fashion houses in both runway shows and advertising campaigns is back in the news, due to a positive development within the industry; namely the issue of guidelines governing their use by the Council of Fashion Designers of America ahead of New York Fashion Week in February. CFDA president, designer Diane Von Furstenberg, has sent out guidelines stating that models should be asked for ID to prove that they are 16 or over on the day of the show, and that those under 18 should not be kept working past midnight for fittings, which usually take place the night before the show and go on till the early hours of the morning.

The Model Alliance, founded and directed by model Sara Ziff, aims to further these guidelines with the introduction of a privacy policy backstage, which will prevent photographers taking candid (ie; unauthorised) shots of models while they are changing, which often crop up online – a particularly worrying phenomenon when the models are under age. The Alliance distributed a survey among working models and found that over half of the respondents had started working between the gaes of 13 and 16.

In her 2009 documentary exposé of the modelling industry, Picture Me, Ziff, who was working as a model at the time of filming, recalls seeing a 12-year-old with a colouring book backstage at a Chanel show. Her film also revealed widespread sexual manipulation of under age girls; Ziff recalls being told to strip to her bra and knickers and “give me sexy” by a photographer in his forties, and that at the time she was too young to wear a bra, was wearing Mickey Mouse underwear, and had no sexual experience. The use of pre-pubescent models to sell a myth is unhealthy both for them, and the women it seeks to defraud, and does a disservice to both. With children paid to imitate adults and adult women trying to look like children, who is it serving exactly?

Alison Bruce, co-director of Colours model agency in Glasgow, says: “I think that it is very damaging to the adult women who are consuming these images and comparing themselves to 14-year-olds, often not even realising that’s how young the model they are looking at is. The beauty ads sell a dream that you too can have the skin of a child, when you can’t.

“There’s been a change in how people respond to those heavily retouched images; the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty featuring women with grey hair and wrinkles has been very popular.”

Presumably not with Tessa Hartmann, founder of the Scottish Fashion Awards, though, who says: “Despite being in my early forties, I like to look at pretty faces and I can judge for myself whether the look or product they are selling would work for me or not. Am I offended at Julia Roberts being airbrushed? No more than I am at the Marks & Spencer TV food campaign.

“We don’t complain when we look at the photography on a ready meal pack; we buy it in the knowledge that it will not even vaguely resemble the picture when we prepare it at home. We must take responsibility for our own perceptions of reality.”

For Jo Swinson it is the fashion and advertising industries who need to address their attitudes to reality: “Consumers don’t want to be spun a lie. And that extends to politics, journalism, everything – there’s a move towards more honesty and authenticity in every area.” She believes that diversity is an important element of such honesty, saying: “Girls in their late teens modelling is not a problem, nor are naturally very skinny girls. The problem comes when we don’t see them alongside a mix of older or fatter people, which promotes the idea that this is the only way to look.”

If we are to reclaim reality as the default setting for our perceptions of beauty, age is clearly an issue that must gain equal prominence with the debate around size. If it were to do so, it may well go some way to solving the latter issue, given that pre-pubescent bodies are always going to be smaller than those of fully-developed women.

In the meantime cosmetic company MAC’s most recent collaborations offer some respite from the pressure to locate the fountain of youth; in January they launched collections by 90-year-old interior designer and eccentric fashion maven Iris Apfel, and 44-year-old aristocratic artist and fashion collector Daphne Guinness. Both ranges are firmly aimed at MAC’s core consumer group of young women, befitting an edgy runway-led brand, rather than as collections specifically tailored to the the more mature consumer, thus encouraging them to take inspiration from the beauty and style of older women.

Similarly cheering are 45-year-old supermodel Cindy Crawford’s thoughts on the subject of digital retouching: “Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.”

What are your thoughts on the use of very young models? What do you think of digital retouching and the fashion industry’s attitude towards older women? Let us know in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter.