'Scouted' star is used to putting faces in front of camera, but not her own

Page Parkes, a Texas-based scout for the modeling industry, doesn't need Nielsen ratings to know that people are watching what she does on Scouted, a reality show on the E! channel.

The heavy traffic on her agency's website tells the story loud and clear.

"Before Scouted premiered, we averaged a couple of thousand hits a week [at pageparkes.com]," the Denton-born industry veteran says. "Now, all of a sudden, we're up to 13,000 visitors a week."

Consider that not only a testament to the power of television, but also an indication of how many wannabe models are out there among us, undeterred by a show that reveals how the odds are against them.

Scouted airs at 9 p.m. Monday on E!

Parkes is one of four scouts from different parts of the country profiled in the series. They are forever searching for girls who have the look and the presence to make it big in the fashion business.

The scouts often find girls with potential in the unlikeliest places: in shopping malls, in grocery stores, at high-school sporting events. Parkes refers to it as "a human treasure hunt."

After a little preparation, candidates then are sent to New York, where staffers at One Management try to determine which ones have the most potential.

It's an inexact science, Parkes says, partly because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, partly because what's "in" today might not be desirable tomorrow. But she loves the challenge.

Parkes has been in "the game" since 1981. The Page Parkes Corp., with offices in Dallas, Houston and Miami, is the largest model and talent group in the Southwest. Her Dallas office, Page Parkes Management (formerly known as Page.214), opened its doors in 1984.

After all of these years of working in the trenches of the modeling industry, Parkes says it's somewhat surreal to be suddenly in the spotlight on Scouted.

"The behind-the-scenes position is the one that I am most familiar with," she says. "I have always enjoyed being a mentor to the girls. I have been asked to be in reality shows before, but I didn't do them, because they had more to do with my family or personal life, and that's not what I felt comfortable doing.

"The reason Scouted was right for me was that it's about the work. And it shows an aspect of the industry -- what goes into finding and developing young stars -- that the public has rarely been shown."

If you tune in expecting this to be a competition-driven show, chock-full of bizarre challenges, feuding and backbiting in the vein of, say, America's Next Top Model, you'll be in for a surprise.

Scouted is a documentary-style program that aims to give a truer glimpse of what the journey entails.

"There is absolutely no heightened drama between myself and the other scouts or between myself and the models or between the girls themselves," Parkes says. "I think that's refreshing."

Still, viewers might come away wondering exactly what the geniuses in the fashion and modeling business are thinking. After all, there seems to be a counterintuitive preference today for unusual, even awkward-looking girls over traditional beauties.

It's almost as if somebody's playing a practical joke on us.

"That's sometimes how we feel as scouts," Parkes says. "I can only imagine how those people who are consumers feel. But I'm not the one who decided that the models should be tall and size 2s. That's the size the sample dresses are made in, and they do not really cater to the shape of America right now."