The Daily Mail's questionable interest in young girls has been well documented but even by its own uncomfortably low standards the Mail Online has turned the creepiness up a notch today with a story about Heidi Klum's eight-year-old daughter, who the Mail thinks is a "leggy beauty":
She's eight-years-old.
In the article itself the Mail Online has four pictures of the eight-year-old girl being picked up from a gymnastics class, wearing gym shorts:
"It looks like Heidi Klum's daughter might be hoping to become a model just like her mother... Heidi's eldest Leni clearly stole the show with her workout attire..."
What "show" is this? She's being picked up from gymnastics in her gym kit?
The Mail's caption writer adds beneath one shot:
"All eyes on me: The eight-year-old showed off her best model walk through the parking lot..."
And when the Mail says "all eyes" were on the eight-year-old girl, what they mean is "a photographer waited outside a kid's gym class to take these photos, knowing we buy pictures of very young girls".
The very young girl in question is doing nothing more attention-seeking than walking out of a gym class in her gym kit, into the no-doubt uninvited glare of a paparazzi's camera yet the Mail's "all eyes on me" premise suggests a child wearing a gym kit to a gym class is somehow shameless attention-seeking by an eight-year-old girl. Similarly, the Mail's suggestion that an eight-year-old girl was doing her best "modelling walk" and also "putting on her best modelling face" are part of the same weak justification.
The Daily Mail does an increasingly implausible job of holding itself up as some kind of moral arbiter yet its online editors seem to see no reason why an eight-year-old girl should be allowed to go to and from a gym class without comments being passed on her body.
Update:
The Mail has been roundly criticised online and by its own readers for this article. The best-rated comments posted on its story all make a similar point:
The Mail has responded by removing the phrase "leggy beauty" from the promotion of the story in its right hand column:
The Mail has also removed two of the pictures of the child from its story. However the article still makes for very uneasy reading.
I’d like to think that if this had happened outside my daughter’s gym class the headline would instead be “Photographer kicked in the nuts outside gym class”
Posted by: Currybet | Jan 28, 2013 at 13:09
This is sick. As a parent - in fact, forget that - as a human being this disgusts me.
Doesn't the Daily Mail complain about people sexualising young girls and making them grow up too quick? Now they're calling an 8 yo a "leggy beauty"! WTF!!
Posted by: Chris | Jan 28, 2013 at 13:17
This is the Daily Mail that a few months back mindlessly parroted Julie Burcill's preposterous lie that John Peel regulartly hosted schoolgirl beauty pageants ...on the RADIO!
Posted by: Clark Gwent | Jan 28, 2013 at 13:47
Currybet, this is standard for the Mail, Suri Cruise has been hounded and creeped over by them since birth. Also, no mention of this girl looking clearly very annoyed by the photographers, who the Mail paid for their intrusion.
Posted by: Burch | Jan 28, 2013 at 13:59
err, meant that to Chris clearly. Bit daft today. I think somewhere on themediablog they broke down the number of Suri 'articles' they had in a year, forget the details, but it was every 2 or 3 days I think.
Posted by: Burch | Jan 28, 2013 at 14:01
The Mail article suggests the girl and her 3-year-old sister (what are they doing hounding a 3-year-old and 8-year-old!) were playing up to the cameras. Ridiculous. But perhaps the Mail writes that for its own sake. They need to pretend this is somehow just another knock-about showbiz story about celebrities inviting such coverage upon themselves. The alternative would be admitting to themselves they ran it for sickeningly inappropriate reasons.
Posted by: Ruth | Jan 28, 2013 at 14:24
Of course they were playing to the cameras. That is what little girls do, being a princess or a film star, but with no idea of the meanings adults construct
Posted by: R moody | Jan 28, 2013 at 15:43
one thing i don't know how many people picked up here was calling her gym kit "work out attire"
how many 8 year olds do you know who work out? kids go to the gym for fun, exercise, sure, but not to work out! working out to me sounds like a very adult definition, it's about toning your abs or getting ready for a bikini beach holiday or a hot date. that implication of her working out in the gym just...
1 - it totally feeds into body image issues which 8yo girls shouldn't have and
2- it adds a really creepy element :/
Posted by: harriette | Jan 28, 2013 at 22:26
Shock horror, The DM is a grubby tabloid rag that isn't fit to line a cat tray. Not at all surprised TBH
Posted by: mandrill | Jan 29, 2013 at 18:25
It continues to amaze me that people still buy the Mail, do they do it for the comedy or do they seriously buy into what the Mail is selling?
Posted by: chris | Jan 29, 2013 at 21:01
maybe the paper should be known as the daily paedomail
Posted by: anna | Jan 29, 2013 at 22:25
I recommend that everyone concerned by this article write to the Press Complaints Commission reference Clase 3 (Privacy) and Clause 6 (Children). It's in clear breach of both.
Posted by: Jennie Kermode | Jan 29, 2013 at 22:49
That paper needs shutting down. Ran by nazis, who clearly look at children on the side. IT'S NOT THE 1960S, DAILY MAIL
Posted by: Powerisastateofmind | Jan 29, 2013 at 22:53
Daily mail - the respectable face of paedophilia
This child had bern photographed wearing gym clothes heading from a gym class, in what way is that playing to the camera?
Posted by: J cook | Jan 30, 2013 at 03:04