Every Monday afternoon dozens and dozens of teenage girls queue up outside Dotto Models, Argentina's most successful model agency, in the hope that they can become one. "I saw them on telly," says I5 year old Liliana. "It is every girls dream to have a fun life like that and be adored."
Pancho Dotto, the agency's owner, says he is more than just a manager of teenage beauties but an internationally recognized businessman leading one of Argentina's few booming export industries.
With top models such as like Valeria Mazza, who breaks news in Argentina everytime she makes the cover of an international magazine and whose marriage last week to a local businessmen was televised live, Pancho claims he has put Argentina on the map of world glamour.
Today all Argentine women want to be models, says Pancho, just as in the past they wanted to be air hostesses, boutique assistants or one of thousands of mini-dressed girls offering promotion gifts on streets, a traditional feature of beauty conscious Buenos Aires. Every year more than 7,000 young girls join Pancho's national talent spotting contest seeking fame and fortune.
The prize is to become a photographic model, shooting in Miami, Paris, New York, or Tokyo earning up to $50,000 a campaign or $5,000 for a fashion show. 'I am very popular in Japan and Thailand because I look very young and innocent," said skinny Gabriela,15, whose little snub nose resembles that of Japanese cartoon nymphet.
Marina, who has just arrived from a shoot in New York said, "They call me the Argentine Pamela Anderson. But I try not to take too much notice of all the attention. It is so exaggerated here, they think we are somehow superhuman- that we don't do things like go to the toilet."
The common factor between these two models is their mixed European features- a characteristic of Buenos Aires which has always made its residents feel unique in Latin America. And this, according to Daniel Ripoll, editor of the magazine Models, dedicated exclusively to the country's best babes, is the reason why Argentine models have become so sought after internationally. "We have a very special mix of European immigration, Italians mixed with Germans, Dutch, Russian and Eastern European. It is very attractive."
But for the majority of Argentines this auburn haired, green-eyed, and slender look doesn't come naturally. To achieve this ideal many are willing to alter their faces and bodies through plastic surgery. "Our models are international in more than one sense-a part of them is from Japan, this part from Miami, this part from Brazil," jokes Andy Kusnietsov, producer of a best rating shows presented by a model.
It's not just wannabe models who turn to the surgeon's knife. Because of popular soap operas like 90-60-90, based on the ideal centimeter curves of models and chronicling the ups and downs of their lives, many normal teenagers feel they have to change their bodies simply to boost their career chances. Veronica, a 20 year old student, is one of them. She wants to be a TV presenter, "but my breasts were too small for my body. And the operation was very simple."
People say all this is a trickle down effect ignited by Argentina's leaders.
President Menem (5 ft 6) dedicated more time to German super model Claudia Schiffer (5 ft 9) when she visited than to Argentine Nobel prize winner for science Cesar Milstein. Mr. Menem's ex-wife, Zulema, had to explain to the nation her husband had a weakness for leggy blondes. And the model girlfriend of the President's son Carlitos added further insight into the nature of the country's powerful men, "No man feels important without a model on his arm."
Argentina's current mindset has become labeled as "pizza and champagne." after the President's own flash-trash lifestyle. But, even though many Argentines are proud that their leaders can be part of the international jet-set the question remains whether young people are being exploited to sell a national fantasy.
Pancho Dotto seeks girls out as young as 12 years old from the far corners of Argentina's interior and brings them to the big city to live in his apartments and tells them they must always look good in order "sell their image 24 hours a day". He calms parents fears with strict guidelines and curfews and by promising a small fortune.
Some models like Flavia, who retired at 19 two years after winning Elite's Look of the Year contest, can't take the pressure. "They saw it was not natural for me to be as skinny as is the fashion now, and they kept putting me on a diet." She said. "They'd sell me to a client a week in advance on the premise that I'd lose four kilos by the next Monday. I'd starve and weigh myself religiously all week and if I hadn't lost the amount by Sunday night I'd be in a complete state."
Flavia, 21, also talked of the humiliation of "being displayed and scrutinized between clients and bookers like a piece of meat." But what most exhausted her was that "to be a successful model you have to be constantly seen at the right events, and nightclubs, dating famous people. That is how most models prolong their status when they are past twenty and are not so popular."
Other teenage models like 16 year old Liliana feel they have things under control. "There are many bad people and lots of drugs in the environment. You have to beware. But", she adds, "I am really proud that I can help my parents out, because the economic situation is really bad."
While there is money to be made in one of Argentina's few booming industries, most Argentines prefer to enjoy the fantasy rather than look too deeply into the reality behind it. "We are just going with the flow while it lasts," says Daniel Ripoll editor of Models magazine.
