Editorial: Spotlight on role of models

It's been a rocky introduction to life in the limelight for 17-year-old Top Model contender Rosanagh Wypych.

Many teenagers make poor decisions, but hers have also come under the glare of the New Zealand's Next Top Model spotlight.

First was a drink driving conviction, which Rosanagh admitted in an orchestrated women's magazine interview, saying she'd learned from her traumatic experience in court just months before.

It didn't take long for media to be alerted to the other convictions she - or possibly those advising her - chose to conceal: that she'd also been caught driving while disqualified and given false details to police.

That earned her another set of unpleasant headlines.

But all the while, Rosanagh was posting photos of herself on her Facebook page partying with friends, many of them clutching open cans of booze, and, in one image, a substance that looked a lot like cannabis.

Most of the dozens of photos on the surprisingly public Facebook page - open to nearly 4000 friends and all of their friends - were of Rosanagh and friends taking photos of themselves at parties.

Some in the Hawke's Bay Today newsroom commented they were fairly typical of many teenage girls.

But ever since Rosanagh was accepted for Top Model, she has not been a typical teenage girl. Having 3800 Facebook friends is not typical.

And given the very untypical situation she's been thrown into, you would hope she would be getting better advice.

We asked TV3 if they'd advised Rosanagh on being cautious with Facebook, or on how to handle the media interest in her life. They replied with a one-paragraph statement saying Friday's final would be "spectacular!".

The morning after we'd contacted TV3 about the photos, Rosanagh had taken the offending pictures down, but still left the rest of her page open for thousands to see.

That night, in another orchestrated media appearance, Rosanagh said the show had "shown me a good path I want to go on".

It's hard to understand what's going on behind the scenes, but from the outside, I'm not sure whether that's true.