Argh! It seems that nearly every other day a celebrity mag is doing a feature on Suri Cruise’s shoes, Harper Beckham’s dresses or another celebrity child’s style, inviting comments on the kid’s dress sense, their looks and so on (nearly as offensive as the Daily Fail’s obsession with celeb kids being ‘all grown up’ at 14/15/16. Ugh).
That’s bad enough. But this afternoon a celeb mag tweeted ‘Would you rather be Harper Beckham, Suri Cruise or Shiloh Jolie Pitt?’
Based on what factor, exactly? How cute the kids are? How old we are? Whether or not we fancy their dads or think their mums have great style?
This obsession with celebrity children is utterly ridiculous and more than a little creepy. In some instances I blame the parents *entirely* for allowing their children to become the object of such ludicrous behaviour but the media needs to stop feeding it and the kids should be kept out of the blimmin’ limelight. Let these kids enjoy their childhoods in peace, and then hopefully they’ll be able to lead normal lives.
I don’t care what TomKat’s daughter looks like, or Brangelina’s. I only care that they’re happy.
The only people these children will see while they’re growing up that aren’t celebrities will be the paps or sales people. Their dentists will be celebrities, their doctors will be celebrities, as one by one they bring out a face cream or tooth treatment. So of course they will grow up with no concept of what a normal person is. It won’t phase them to see photos of themselves paraded around in high heels and lipstick. But they WILL throw it in their parent s faces at that lovely teenage stage, and what will their parents answer be/ Well honey, my friend was a designer who was trying to raise her profile so I helped her out’…’and no you may not have a tattoo’ ‘but Mum, my friend is a tattooist who wants to raise their profile’ I also think the mag editors kid themselves that we want to see it. Have they TRIED commissioning well written thought provoking pieces instead of filling the space between the ads with the latest celeb kid pics? I think we can all do better than this.
Daily Mail are constantly publishing photos of poor Suri and then commenting about how miserable she looks, I can’t for the life of me think why she might be upset, perhaps the hoards of photographers following her every move? Really saddens me.
And this is one of the reasons why I always hit ‘delete’ when I get yet another pr email about the latest competition for the ‘cutest baby’ or the ‘most stylish 4 year old’; it feeds our obsession with how kids look. It’s all very well to be messed up about that when you’re an adult (well, it’s not, obviously), but for pete’s sake, let’s not drag kids into this beauty parade culture too. They get that pressure soon enough, celebrity baby or otherwise.
*Climbs down off her soapbox*
It seems that children are being treated as a commoditiy by [some] celebs, who’re only encouraged further by the media who like to shove them into the limelight, in some sort of popularity contest. I find this quite sickening.
I know what you mean. I very rarely read celeb magazines unless I’m in the hair salon but I do think it’s wrong that these children seem to be thrust into our vision leaving a whole bunch of critics to rip them apart. It really isn’t going to do much for their image later in life. It’s like we’re being blinded by the next generation of role models, many we would definitely not choose for our kids to aspire to.
CJ x
The celeb parents don’t always help themselves. Look at Peaches Geldof saying, ‘This is going to be one stylish baby’ about her crazily named newborn. ‘Stylish’? Because that’s what matters when it comes to being a child… Really sad that she can think something as superficial as being ‘stylish’ is the first thing she wants for her child.