The latest supermodel to hit the headlines is a nine year old from Russia who has amassed an exceptionally massive social media following and now an exceptionally massive media frenzy, for obvious reasons. Because Kristina Pimenova is nine.
And people have been commenting on her legs, calling her ‘a babe’, and – in one instance, where she’s pictured wearing leopard print hotpants – someone comments ‘creepy pic for a child’ and another, ‘I like it’.
While she’s being sexualised by these gross commenters, is what Kristina doing wrong?
She’s been dubbed the ‘most beautiful girl in the world’ and is getting loads of work, so why shouldn’t she continue doing what she wants? Well, on the one hand she’s a child, so she’s not really able to understand what she’s perhaps letting herself in for (ie exposure to a life that a lot of people over twice her age struggle to deal with).
And, as beautiful as she is, there’s just something undeniably worrying about a nine year old playing to a throng of commenters who talk about her legs as if she’s a decade older. Or anything other than a very small, pretty child.
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Her Facebook bio reads: ‘She first got started in modelling when she was three years old. Anywhere her mom would go, people would tell her how adorable Kristina was and tell her to try modelling. Her mom decided to try it out and Kristina soon realized how much fun it was, especially catwalk and fashion shows. She’s been having a blast ever since and is still loving every minute of it.’
Which is all well and good, but what do we feel about little Kristina being airbrushed? Is that OK?
Alright, so maybe airbrushing is just part and parcel of being photographed, and being a model, these days – but the comments under the above picture show the dangers of what she and her family are getting themselves into: ‘You’re ugly’ says one. Another just does three cry-laughing emojis.
Should nine year olds be dealing with getting trolled on their appearance on such a massive, international scale? When someone called us ugly in primary school, it stuck with us for years. You always remember cruel comments at that age – but at least this was playground warfare rather than adults targeting you online.
It’s great that this appears to be something Kristina enjoys, but what happens if she gets older and, like many of us, changes drastically? All her success is hung on her appearance and, while she’s pretty genetically gifted, some of us were angelic blonde little girls who grew up to look pretty ordinary. Or put on weight. Or altered in subtle ways that transformed us from little fairy princess into normal women.
Things change, and people like a messy demise, or a child star that turned into a normal person – look at the hideous reaction to Mary Wilson, the kid from Matilda and Miracle on 34th Street, who grew up and spawned cruel listicle articles about how different she looks now.
Or Haley Joel Osment – don’t pretend you didn’t gasp at that picture of him as a much bigger, slightly balding version of his cute little Sixth Sense self.
Nobody should be set up for such pressure at an age where they’re not even in secondary school yet. The consequences of fame at an early age have been proven time and again as having negative consequences. And no, we’re not going to list names because it’d be an incredibly long list that we all know almost by heart.
We hope this doesn’t backfire, and wish her all the best with her career – but it’s hard not to feel disconcerted and worried about little Kristina’s future.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.