Shadle Sophomore Sets Sights On Modeling Career

In front of the camera, Vanessa Jenson is a girl with a million faces.

Sometimes she’s a pouty ingenue. Other times, she is a sophisticated business person or a glamour girl.

Away from the camera, Jenson is a sophomore at Shadle Park High School. She takes math and business classes and eats lunch with her friends. At home, she plays with her 5-year-old brother and 11-year-old sister, and turns to her mom and dad for advice.

But when she talks, it’s her career that’s on her mind.

Jenson, 15, has just signed contracts with an international modeling agency in Miami and a regional firm in Seattle.

Her pictures appeared in Thailand’s fashion magazines last summer.

While there’s a temptation to call her an overnight success - that’s far from the truth for her or any of the handful of teenagers who crack the world of big-time modeling.

“I’ve worked four years to get where I am,” she said during a break between classes last week. “And the work is just beginning.”

She has set her sights on the fashion runways of Paris, Milan and New York. She hopes one day to see herself on the fashion magazine covers. She knows that only a handful of people ever model in the international markets.

Jenson is trying to make sure she’s one of them.

But to do that she, and her parents, Randy and Vanpen, must make a total commitment.

“I have to eat right, work out every day, finish school and lose weight,” says the already slim, 5-foot-9 teen. “If I don’t do this now, if I wait until I’m 20 years old, I won’t ever hit the big time.”

Every morning, she and her father go to a gym to lift weights and do aerobic classes.

At school Jenson is studying extra hard, hoping to graduate early and move, perhaps, to Miami. She takes three classes a day at Shadle and takes six classes a day at home.

It helps that both her parents are educators. Her mother, Vanpen, is a professor at Eastern Washington University, and her father, Randy, is a junior high teacher. Playing on their daughter’s desire to model in Paris - they recently found a native French speaker to be her tutor.

“My career has made me very serious about school,” she said. “Because of it, I know that I am working toward something.”

At Shadle Park, teacher Nina Stoddard recognizes Jenson’s seriousness.

“One day, I asked Vanessa to take my photography class,” Stoddard said. “She said, `I need to take business classes so I can be prepared for my career.”’

Jenson’s Spokane agent, P.J. Wilkenson Trzeciak, said Jenson has the right look and the critical height to become a model.

“Vanessa will never be a bread and butter girl,” she said of Jensen, who has the coloring and bone structure of her Thai mother and the height of her American father. “She has an exotic look.”