Review: "Over the Hill at Fourteen" by Jamie Callan

Over the Hill at Fourteen by Jamie Callan
Published 1982
★★★

Sylvia is fourteen, a model—and, at the grand old age of fourteen, heading over the hill. Her friends and parents might not thing her modelling career is all that, but Sylvia is proud of it and convinced that it makes her special...and if she's about to age out of modelling because fourteen is too old to be sexy(!!!), she wants to get her acting career going instead.

This is ridiculous and outdated but also kind of wildly entertaining. Like, you can't criticize Sylvia for lack of self-awareness:

Camille, my best and only true friend, says that I'm really getting conceited over this whole modeling thing and that as soon as I grow a little pair of breasts, I'll be out of a job. Camille just doesn't realize how wrong she is, because you see, I'm not getting conceited. I am conceited. (2)

There's quite a lot of this (Sylvia being kind of awful but also okay with it), which ends up making for quite a fun read here. I love that the people around her are really pretty meh about Sylvia's modelling—they'd really kind of rather that she get her head out of her bum a bit and be a normal teenager. Meanwhile, Sylvia is terrified of becoming a teenager because she'll lose out on jobs that go to younger, 'sexier' models (parts of this do not age well); she's not ready for hormones and dating, and she's certainly not ready for the way everyone in the fashion world, to say nothing of her good friend who is a boy, seems ready to sexualize her.

There's a batty side plot involving Sylvia's father (spoiler, but also this was written in the 80s and not exactly become a classic: he's fired for spending too much time on his own products, then immediately develops a better type of lipstick...which goes into production and so on pretty much instantly, with no little hiccups like safety testing or FDA approval—the latter isn't always necessary for makeup, but because in this case it's a matter of colorant, it might be); that side plot is low-key useless, but I suppose it adds a side of drama and also gives Sylvia a chance to show that she doesn't care that much about the money she's making (the vast majority of it is in a trust until she's older, and the only time we really see her wanting to access it is when her family is in financial difficulties).

I don't know that I can in good conscience recommend this, but it did end up being quite a bit funnier—and willing to take risks with Sylvia's character—than I would have expected.