Oh, and isn't it so American to take a very pretty girl and make her the "Elephant Man" of beauty.
She can't just be a young, really good-looking model. She can't just be one of the world's youngest super models, she has to have this giant thorny crown on her tiny perfect head that says "most beautiful girl in the world".
Can't see that going wrong. Can't see the pressure of that title screwing her up every which way but loose.
Do I care that she's not growing up a normal child? Well, I guess lots of kids have it a hell of a lot worse.
I was watching BBC News last night and I saw a lot of 10-year-old Syrian children starving and struggling to adjust to life in new countries that didn't want them.
I think that would be worse than a heap of fashion shoots and jet plane trips. Do I think her life is fun? Probably not.
I've done film and magazine shoots and they're generally agonisingly boring whether you are beautiful or not.
Is she being sexualised? I hope not, but there are creeps everywhere and they are not just looking at pictures of young models, they're looking at their neighbours' children, and their own children and friends' children.
Do I think she's the most beautiful girl in the world? Well, I think she's very pretty, though I would argue her forehead is a little long, but holy crap who am I to judge the size of a tween's forehead?
I think she's a very pretty girl whose life is probably run by a mother who is both proud and vicariously living her dreams through her daughter.
I think it will cause problems when she's older, because I don't know of any beautiful women who've found ANY degree of happiness through their beauty.
Do I have any real problem with it? Not really. I look at things like this and tend to sigh and think, "typical American marketing again!"
I'm not going to pretend to feel outraged or sad. I just think that, like other modern-day distractions such as "green juice" and "Menswear Dog" (Bodhi, who looks like Anderson Cooper, if Anderson Cooper were a dog), the "world's most beautiful girl" will go on to model and then maybe she won't. Maybe she'll be the next Giselle or maybe by 12 she'll be burnt out and decide, to her mother's dismay, that she wants to become a doctor when she's older.
Isn't it funny, though, that as soon as we give someone a title, even a pretty 10-year-old girl, we all stop and stare and then start to make up our minds about the morals of parents, the ridiculousness of the fashion industry, the horror of perverts and the attraction of feminism.
The most beautiful girl in the world? We'll believe anything the media tells us.
- nzherald.co.nz
