It wasn't long ago when I read B's brilliant post on "Children and the fashion industry: When are they TOO young?" regarding 10 year-old Thylane Blondeau's visually jaw-dropping (and questionable) shoot in the French edition of Vogue. Some may defend the shoot & say that it's a stunning high fashion shoot, or that it's blatantly inappropriate and somewhat creepy.
Only a week or so ago I picked up on this article in the Daily Mail about Thylane's mother closing down her daughter's Facebook account which boasted 700 strong fan base following the bombardement of all the criticism she received. (I've been told that her online portfolio consist of much worse and even nude photos too!)
Yesterday, I read another pretty disturbing article about how a mother of a girl as young as 12 posed in revealing clothes, complete with belly piercing had posted these images on the internet, seriously WTF was she thinking? Oh yes, she wanted her daughter to be noticed in hope of launching her modelling career. OMGG.
She is now 15 years old and 16 weeks pregnant and her goal/ambition in life? To be a glamour model... (since posting this yesterday, I want to be clear in saying that there is nothing wrong with becoming a glamour model. I hope I haven't offended anyone here, I sure as hell didn’t mean to come across like that. My concerns lie of that with the mother's actions and the welfare of the child. Is the aspiration of becoming a glamour model what the child really wants when she grows up? Or is this the profession that her mother is pushing her into? She is only 15 years old and potentially quite vulnerable still. Does she really know what she wants (in life)? It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to become when I grew up and that changed at least a billion times, but I guess everyone is different. More worryingly and the main issue of the post is in regards to the sexualisation of young girls & inappropriate imagery of kids online/in the media. In 2008, The Times quoted that “MySpace reported that it had identified and removed 29,000 convicted sex offenders caught using the site.” I don’t really know if there are any other networking sites or childrens modelling agencies that have had to deal with similar issues such as this, but it is pretty worrying.)
I had a momentary brain fart as so many thoughts sped through & collided in my brain...I'm not even going to go into what her mother was thinking because in a nutshell, she is just going to come out of this situation with the possibility of a bigger council house for her other kids and pregnant 15 yr old daughter. (Surely not fair to low-income families who are on waiting lists with serious health and welfare concerns and in need of a suitable home too? I have no issues with council homes, but am concerned that this mother could be abusing the system, but appreciate her circumstances too, tricky). But that is the UK after all and they are rather generous with the tax payers money.
Now this...
image via Jour Apres Lunes
Anyhoos, talk about can't get these kiddies sexualised quick enough! I guess waiting til a slightly more maturer age of 13 is considered way to OLD these days??? This kinda reminds me of that episode of SATC 'Hot child in the City' where Samantha's super rich & rather grown up teen client is already talking & dressing like a grownup, appears to have missed out on her childhood innocence. How sad.
What are your thoughts on all this controversy?