It's one p.m. on a spring day in San Antonio, Texas, and cheerleaders have overrun the entire town. Everywhere you look, you see navel-exhibiting, lollipop sucking, hip-shaking teen girls with too much makeup and fancy hairdos getting dampened from the drizzle that's been falling over the Alamo all morning.
The city is simultaneously host to the Showmakers of America Alamo City Dance/Drill Team Competition and the American Spirit Championship Southern Nationals. During what must be a lunch break, the cheerleaders are SUV'd by their bleached mothers/chaperons to the Alamo for the "educational" portion of this weekend trip.
Or maybe it's because of the next-door Riverview Mall.
Hiding from the rain under the gazebo in front of the Alamo, Molly looks like the cheerleader whose overprotective mother told her to "wash that makeup off and put a sweater on before you go out, young lady!" Wearing jeans, sneakers, an oversized jacket, and a leather cowboy hat, she hardly rates a second look from the dirty old men in trench coats secretly scouting the short-skirted cheerleaders.
To be sure, Molly is a pretty girl, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and clear skin. But with downtown San Antonio looking very much like a high school overrun by popular girls, Molly's shy demeanor and too few exposed areas of skin lack the gum-cracking sassiness of the specimens that surround her.
Truth be told, she is not a cheerleader. But Molly is popular. Extremely popular. She's the star of Molly-Model.com, a modeling Website exclusively dedicated to her. The site has 1,300 paying customers and her Yahoo! fan club is the second-most popular modeling fan club on the massively popular Web portal, with more than 9,000 members. "I even beat the Girls of Maxim!"she proudly says. "And those girls are, you know, kinda nice!"
It's hard to believe that this shy teenage girl could have a bigger fan club than the siliconed �ber-babes of Maxim magazine. But she does. Then again, her fans are not necessarily into double-D cups and push-up bras.
In many ways, Molly is an average 16-year-old girl. She, you know, goes to high school and, you know, has a boyfriend and, you know, says you know a lot when she talks. She's a straight-A student, hopes to graduate with honors, go to college, and become a doctor. She just got her driver's license so she can finally buy the car she's been saving up for with her new part-time job.
It shouldn't take long. "I mean, I used to have a job at State Farm and I was making six bucks an hour. Right now, for the work I'm doing, I'm making five figures a month," she says. Not too bad when you're in high school.
It's the stuff you see on TV. You know, the news stories about the Internet: New frontier. New crimes. The ones with the police officer standing in front of the flickering computer screen explaining how perverts are on the Internet and in the chat rooms, stalking kids and trying to lure them with lies, telling them they are Hollywood agents, modeling scouts, TV producers, etcetera.
No matter what the TV says, teen girls desperately want to believe the fairytale. They want to believe they can put their picture on the Internet, be noticed, and become a star. In Molly's case, that's exactly what happened.
She put up her name on an Internet modeling board, a man named Gary L. Smith called her up and offered to make her a star, and a couple of e-mails and phone calls later, she was in Florida for her first-ever modeling shoot. A few months after that, she's the Internet's hottest teen model. "I go out there and I see the number of members and it's like, ?Yeah!'" Molly says. "It's a blast, it's awesome!"
Molly admits she was a little surprised when Smith offered to build her a Website. Movie stars, pop stars, and models have their own Websites - but a high school girl from St. Louis? "I was a little shaky, you know, kinda thinkin': ?I'm gonna have my own Website! It's a little different from average modeling,'" Molly remembers. "But I said, okay, go ahead and try it. You have nothing to lose. I went ahead and it's worked out great!"
The site is less than a year old, but there are already more than a thousand pictures of Molly in her "portfolio," grouped in easy-to-navigate series with names like: "Pink top and panties," "Up against the bricks," and "Candy Canes." There are a dozen sample pictures and it costs $17.95 a month to become a member and have access to the whole collection. Paying members also get Molly's e-mail address and invitations to regular live chats.
"I get all sorts of numbers," Molly says. "I've gotten [every]one from a woman teacher in Nebraska to a 15-year-old kid who thinks I'm good lookin'." But those aren't her only fans. "Yeah, there's the... umm... middle-aged men, kinda looking for a friend or some friendship, you know?"
Apparently what these new friends want are pictures of Molly in cocktail dresses, in jeans and tank tops, lounging on a sofa in shorts and a T-shirt. Molly in a bikini, Molly in a business suit, Molly in a cheerleader outfit, Molly sucking on a sugar cane.
Some pictures do get a bit racy, like the one on the samples page of her sitting on a bed, halfway through removing her shirt, or the other one where she's taking off her panty. "I set my limits, I know what I wanna do, I know how sexual I can be without going over the line," Molly explains. "I've looked through magazines, through Seventeen and Cosmo and I kinda get a feel as to, you know, what's acceptable and what's pushing it. I mean, if you look through the average magazine you're gonna see sexy girls. That's... what sells! The fashion today is skimpy, it's short skirts, you know, that's just what you're gonna see."
Molly hopes the Website will help her get the attention of a big-time agent or producer. I contacted several modeling agencies for their opinion of Molly-Model and other similar Websites. The consensus is that the Internet is not a place they go to scout fresh talent. "I looked at those sites," said Maureen McCurdy, assistant to the owner of Next Model Management (www.nextmodels.com) in New York City. "They are certainly not a place where any top agency scout would look. The best way to submit pictures is still by mail."
Well, at least there's the money. Molly actually makes more money than the average rookie model in a standard agency. She gets 70 percent of all profits even though Smith put up all startup costs. Much of these profits come from the impressive merchandising section on Molly-Model. Members can buy CD-ROMs and autographed Polaroids. But the really hot item, Molly says, is the undeveloped roll of film of a custom shoot. For $100 to $200, members can send in an outfit that, for whatever reason, he would like to see Molly - the hottest 16-year-old on the Internet - pose in, and receive the exclusive, undeveloped roll of film. (If, for whatever reason, the customer doesn't want to bring in his exclusive pictures of Molly - the hottest 16-year-old on the Internet - to his local photo developer, he can also ask to have the exclusive film developed before shipment.)
"I think they like the idea that they're getting something, like, unique," Molly says. "I think everyone who joins the site and downloads the pictures kinda have this idea that maybe if I one day become popular or a celebrity, that they might be worth something."
Molly explains that Smith scares off the occasional requesters of nude pictures by threatening to send a copy of the letter to the FBI. "People have sent in requests, like, you know, for a teddy on a bed... and I try to stay away from the really sexual stuff," she says. "I try to steer it toward the innocent."
Taking her clothes off for the camera is not something she would consider, not now or even after she turns 18. "When you are modeling, you're supposed to be selling the clothes or the product that you're trying to sell. That's the whole point of a model," Molly explains. "She's trying to sell a type of product, and when you're not wearing anything, you're not trying to sell anything but yourself, and that's not my style at all."
So what is it, then, that she's selling?
"Right now I'm just trying to promote myself as a model trying to get into more business. I'm open for fashion or runway or commercial. I mean, I'm up for any of that."
Molly is a smart girl. She didn't just hop on a plane to meet with this stranger from the Internet who was offering fame and fortune. She asked to see some of Gary Smith's work and got her mother's permission before she agreed to meet him.
It never occurred to her, however, to look at the Chicago Sex Offender Registry. Had she taken a look, she would have found Gary Smith's picture with the words: "Victim under the age of 18" next to it.
According to the police report, Smith was arrested in 1997 for "kissing and fondling" his 15-year-old babysitter's breasts on two occasions. Also according to the police report, the babysitter's father and a pastor confronted Smith about the allegations and "Mr. Smith admitted to both occurrences, and further stating (sic) that he needed some counseling."
On February 17, 1998, Smith pleaded nolo contendere to a charge of sexual abuse in the first degree and received a 60-month suspended sentence. He was ordered to undergo counseling and forbidden to contact the victim. The judgment makes no reference to any special dispositions that would prevent him from working with other teenage girls.
When I ask Smith about this, he doesn't skip a beat. "I was living in Arkansas at the time with my wife. We had a babysitter who sat for us. She constantly flirted, one day kissed me, came back, and said if I didn't get her cocaine or crack she would go tell her parents. She decided to go tell her parents. Being in Arkansas, the middle of the Bible Belt in America, I pled guilty as opposed to fighting it, risking jail time."
Smith says this conviction is not something he feels he necessarily has to disclose to his models or their parents. "I can see if I actually pursued somebody, and you know, raped somebody, and you know, had sex with somebody that was underage. But that was not the case." He says he will tell them if they ask, though.
"Molly knows about it."
How did Molly find out?
"I told her."
Actually, he hadn't. I did. Molly sounded, as you would expect, shocked. "That's kinda scary," she says. "That's really, really dangerous... That's very surprising because he's never shown any sexual aggressiveness toward me whatsoever."
She thought she'd done her homework. She knew, for example, that all of Smith's previous oeuvre was pornographic. She says that, at the time, it did not worry her too much or too long. "Well, for a few minutes, maybe, like after he told me," she says. "I know that's not something that I'm interested in and he respected me and told me that anything I didn't want up on the site wouldn't go up there."
Her mom knew about the adult sites as well. "She just said: ?Well, we're doing a teen site and that doesn't matter.' She just saw he had experience on the Web and he knows what these people wanted."
She also felt safe because it was all so virtual. Back home in St. Louis, hardly anybody even knew about the Website. She'd told only a small circle of friends - they thought it was great - and her boyfriend who was learning to deal with it.
"At first I had that feeling like: ?What if they try to stalk me?' You always hear these stories, but we've been really safe. I give a general vicinity as to where I live, I only use my first name, and I never tell 'em what school I go to."
Anyone from her mom to her boyfriend could eavesdrop on the live chats and monitor her e-mails. Smith was the only new person who'd entered her life since the Website went up, and she thought that they had developed a close and trusting relationship in the short time they'd known each other.
Molly took down the Chicago Sex Offender Registry's Website address and said she'd check it out before making any decision. "That's scary. That might make me reconsider what I'm doing, but I don't know, I'd have to ask him about it," she says. "We have built up a trust over time and hearing that from you... It's kinda... out of the ordinary."
Gary Smith does not look anything like a fashion photographer, or what you'd expect one to look like: suave, well-dressed, European. He is a short and stocky man who wears computer geek glasses and doesn't feel there is anything wrong about wearing white sneakers with black pants.
Molly-Model's photographer/Webmaster is from Arkansas and took up photography only a few years ago when he moved to Chicago, after divorcing his wife. "To tell you the truth, the main reason I got into it is that I thought it would be a pretty good way to meet girls," he says. At the time he worked as a computer programmer, doing a little Web design on the side. Much of his design work was for adult Websites. After a while, he figured he might as well start a site of his own.
ChicagoDreamGirls.com is your standard adult Website: pictures of girls between 18 and 20, grouped in easy-to-navigate series with names like: "Playing in bed," "Up against a fence," and "School Girl showing off." The girls are nude, but there is nothing hardcore about the content; the most adventurous pictures are those of two models posing together.
As an independent in the multi-billion dollar online porn industry, Smith managed to make a few bucks. He kept his day job and still did design work for other Websites. He also got to meet plenty of pretty, young girls.
Then came Molly. Molly-Model.com has been online less than a year and already Smith has quit his job; he's even thinking about giving up the adult Website business altogether. "There's one million 18-year-old girls doing hardcore pornography on the Internet, but a teen like Molly, she's one in a million," he says.
What Smith did with Molly-Model - and he's the first one to admit it - is to take the adult pay site format of Chicago Dream Girls and a million others like it, and put a 16-year-old girl in it.
Smith can't be bothered with any type of debate concerning Molly's age. "Why do men go after younger women? There's been teen models that people have been fascinated by over time. Look at Alyssa Milano, Brooke Shields. Brooke Shields started the whole thing in with that movie Pretty Baby and it just went from there.
"You might think of it as her being objectified. She thinks of it as having the power over these guys... and girls," Smith adds. "In fact, she does. She's the one who's got final say. She's like saying: ?Here look, here's what I'm gonna give you. And what are you gonna give me?' And they're gonna whip out their wallets."
Smith opened a second Website in March called Photostudio17.com, where he hopes to eventually have as many as 30 aspiring models between 14 and 19. A Webcam site called teengirlshome.com is also in the works.
"There is no smoking gun here," Smith says. "We don't do anything we're not supposed to do. It's all run above board. I know where the line is because I shoot both sides of the line. I won't put Molly on that line. It's not worth it. She's only 16."
The line. It used to be that 18-year-old girls could get naked - and then some - and younger girls couldn't. Simple enough, right? Sexually explicit material involving younger girls was child porn and was illegal and that was that. If some men got some sort of unmentionable thrill from looking at pictures of 15- and 16- year-old models posing in Seventeen magazine... Well, what could you do?
Then came the Internet. Suddenly, someone who was so inclined could surf for pictures of pretty young models and actresses without having to make up an excuse to buy Cosmogirl. Huge collections of pictures of pretty teenage girls in bikinis, short skirts, and tight T-shirts taken from Websites and personal homepages could be assembled online and, as long as there was no nudity, there was absolutely nothing wrong - or illegal - with such collections. These sites are known as Non-Nude Websites, and literally hundreds of them have come online in the last couple of years.
Smith saw the popularity of these Websites, multiplied them by the millions of adult teen sites that offer nude pictures of eighteen and nineteen-year-olds in ponytails, and came up with Molly-Model. A real teen girl, but no nudity. Everything above board. (Just in case, members do have to sign a legal disclaimer uncannily similar to the one on ChicagoDreamGirls: I am not a U.S. Postal official, or law enforcement agent, or acting as an agent thereof..., I desire to receive and haven't notified the U.S. Postal Service, or any other governmental agency to intercept sexually suggestive material, etc... )
Even if the line isn't crossed - there are no nude pictures on Molly-Model - is the world ready for pay sites peddling pictures of 14- and 15-year-old girls on the Internet using the adult industry's business model? "Obviously they are," says Smith matter-of-factly. "This month we've had 45,000 unique hits, and there's still a week to go in the month."
With Photostudio17.com, Smith sticks with the teen model goldmine he's uncovered. Yet, the new site also has models aged 18 and 19, who are expected to expose a bit more of themselves. All the pictures, from 14-year-old Ashley's "innocent" pictures to 19-year-old Britney's "sheer" pictures are available for one low monthly payment of $22.95. CD-ROMs of the models are available in the merchandising section. Britney's CD has a warning: Nudity inside...
"The girls want to do it. They're, like, ?Sure! Let's do it!' They want to show off and stuff," Smith says. But he would never jeopardize this good thing he's got going by doing something stupid like taking nude pictures of an underage girl. After all, for once in his life, Smith is living the dream. He is his own boss and the Websites are bringing in a ton of money: "Don't tell anyone, but I expect they'll [soon] bring in $10,000 a week." He's even dating one of his models, 20-year-old Natacha.
"You know, I used to look at teen girls and be like: ?Shit, that girl is hot, I wonder what she looks like naked.' Now I look at teenage girls and all I see are dollar signs," Smith says.
"She makes a lot of money, it's, like, unbelievable!" Molly's mom, Lynn Gerhardt, thinks that her daughter's newfound celebrity is just great. It's fun, it's not interfering with school, and it brings in a ton of bacon. Money that will be useful, since Molly's set on going to medical school. "The girl's got more money than I do," Gerhardt says. "And I'm a registered nurse with four years of college!"
Molly's mom doesn't sound all that different from Molly. She, you know, says you know a lot, she's still in school, completing her nursing degree. She never modeled herself - but she's actively supported Molly's dream since she was small. "She was little Miss Stone County," exclaims the proud momma.
Gerhardt is surprisingly unfazed by the fact that her daughter is working with a registered sex offender. "It doesn't really surprise me. He works with naked women," she says. "I know the person and he's never been inappropriate with me or my daughter. I can only go with how I feel about the person.
"Whenever I've been around him, everything has been on the up and up. Molly's never had any problems with him and I'm sure if she did, she would say something."
Molly's first modeling shoot took place in Florida, where Molly's mom lives, and she was present when Smith and Molly actually met in person for the first time.
The two are hardly ever together, Gerhardt points out. Molly lives in St. Louis, Smith in Chicago, and most of the work is done over the Internet. Whenever Molly travels with Smith to do a shoot, she, or another adult such as Molly's boyfriend's mother, come along for the trip.
Gerhardt admits that some of the pictures on Molly's site show a little more than a mother would like. "Some of them are a little risqu�... They kinda go to... just the limit, you know what I mean?" she says. A mother, however, also rationalizes. "They're pictures. Models on runways in Paris are showing more: high fashion models. I don't think what she's doing is vulgar. It's mostly done with taste. It's not like she's slutty."
So who does Mom think is out there paying $17.95 a month to look at her daughter? Who is buying undeveloped rolls of film? Requesting the custom photo shoots? "Probably old men," Gerhardt laughs. This is apparently very funny. "I don't know. I think it's a wide range, but I would imagine it's more older, you know, ,cause they're the ones with credit cards."
A month after I told Molly about Smith's conviction and sex offender status, I received an invitation to the first ever "Meet Molly Day" in San Antonio, Texas. She'd decided to keep working with him.
While in Texas, I visited a town called Sherman to try and meet Charles Prevatt, Webmaster of TexasBeauties.com, one of the "talent agencies" that has contacted Gary Smith about hiring Molly. I wondered what this company could offer Molly, since it seemed like essentially the same type of site as Molly-Model.com. It advertised on the same Non-Nude Websites as Molly's, and the photos on it seemed to be of doubtful artistry, even compared to Smith's own camerawork.
Texas Beauties claims to be some sort of Internet version of the model and talent search. "We work with Agents and direct with parents (sic) to provide a platform for female teen talent to be discovered," reads the Website copy. "In doing so, we offer Videos and CD's of the teens. We cater to Talentscouts, Producers, Directors, and Photographers." The videos' sell for $29.99.
The site says it recruits young girls interested in "glamour" photography, which seems to mean girls in bikinis and lingerie lying on sofa or on a long-hair carpet. The models are between 12 and 17, conveniently indicated next to her picture, along with any special skill she might have.
I called Charles Prevatt when I got to Sherman.
"Yeah, I got your e-mail," said a man who refused to identify himself. "I don't want to speak to you, my name might end up in the papers."
After naively suggesting that talking might be a way to get free publicity for his models, the man hung up.
I learned through the Sherman Chamber of Commerce that Prevatt used to be the town optometrist, now retired. I also got to see Texas Beauties' business address: a rather nice suburban home.
A few days later I received an e-mail from Prevatt. "I own Prevatt Website Engineering. I did the Texas Beauties Website for a client that wants to be anonymous," he wrote.
Jesse McLean of PlanetGirlco.com, another Texas-based teen modeling Website, has a somewhat different attitude toward model management. "The Website is very effective and very strong in terms of beginning to get the exposure that is crucial for a girl to make it in this business. It's the household name syndrome. The more often that people can see a face or a name, the more demand you can place upon your client for money."
McLean is more proactive in terms of getting exposure for his models than Texas Beauties, but then again, modeling, not optometry, has been his business for a while. The Website is only the latest feature of GirLco Model Management, a seven-year-old company that provides models for fashion shows, shopping mall promotions, NASCAR races, and the like.
McLean is uncomfortable with what he calls "Internet-based" teen modeling Websites, sites that operate only on the Internet and that have, he says, little to do with his business. Sites like Molly-Model.
"I don't condone the extent of the style of photography that takes place on that site. I think he's cutting it real close," McLean says. "I've seen some of the stuff in his members section and it's not for me. I deal with 35 girls, which means 70 parents and by no means would I put a girl on a bed, naked, with a sheet covering up a few parts of the remainder of genitalia. That's too much."
When I mention that PlanetGirlco advertises on many of the same non-nude Websites as Molly-Model, McLean replies that it's just a question of going where the traffic is. "I'm not not guaranteed that a group like that isn't able to provide some type of work for them." For example, another Texas-based teen Website has recently contacted him. The person who runs the Website is, oddly enough, an optometrist and offered to pay the girls in eyewear.
The first ever "Meet Molly Day" is not a success. Smith expected at least 10 to 15 fans would take this opportunity to meet Molly in person while she was in San Antonio for a photo shoot, but only one young man who calls himself Patrick showed up. "I wanted to make it real," Smith explains. "I wanted people to be able to have contact, a real connection with her, you know?"
Molly and Patrick are hiding from the rain under the gazebo. The two of them look like a couple of teenagers on a first date, nervously staring at their feet while they talk. In person, Molly looks nothing like the sexed-up nymphet of her Website. Patrick is not a teenager. He is a 20-something student from the University of Texas at San Antonio
Smith is quite friendly, considering that a month ago he was leaving angry messages on my voice-mail and threatening to unleash hordes of computer-savvy Molly fans on my computer. He was furious because I'd talked to Molly about his conviction and his registered sex offender status.
Now the whole thing is dismissed as nothing more than a silly misunderstanding. "I was sure I'd told her," Smith assures me. He showed Molly the court transcripts and explained his side of the story.
Molly says that was good enough for her. "We talked about it and we had a certain trust factor between us. I've never had a problem with him. I mean, nothing like that whatsoever. I have a good feeling about it and I usually go with my instinct. Things have been great and until he gives me a reason... I really believe that that was a one-time incident that everything just got out of hand. I'm wishing for the best between the two of us."
Apparently, things that seem scary at first, like a 16-year-old high school girl starring in her own Internet pay site, or even the fact that the photographer/Webmaster would turn out to be a registered sex offender, become quite ordinary after it's been out there for a while.
