KOMPAS.com - A 16-year-old girl has made a controversial start to her modelling career, posing nude for the cover of a surfing magazine.

With only strategically placed limbs barely covering her modesty, Ella Rose Corby, of Kingscliff in northern New South Wales, has appeared naked on the cover of Stab.

The move has been criticised in both modelling circles and in Miss Corby's home town, with local MP Justine Elliot labelling it "inappropriate."

But the magazine, which is known for its edginess and celebration of parties and sex, has defended the decision, claiming "the lines were blurred" and teenage girls like Miss Corby - who won the shoot in a modelling competition - were "moving into womanhood and they know it".

“You can leer at the 16-year-old as you would an adult woman, so long as you’re ignorant," Stab writer Mike Jennings said. “Once you become aware of their age you must look away.”