Meet the Instamom, a Stage Mother for Social Media

The Weekly Hate Read must humbly apologize to its readers for a lapse two weeks ago resulting in our being scooped. In spite of a gamely take-down by Gothamist, we deprived our readers of what would have been a highly tasty hate read (think alpine Swiss quinoa and ostrich prosciutto with a side of school segregation and woe-is-me $1 million suburban mortgages). But to err is human, to hate divine: so we return to the task we must not refuse. This week brings us the grave matter of Instagram-fuled upper-class child abuse.

Enter a parade of children named Princeton, London, Grey, rendered in filters termed Slumber, Crema, Ludwig by parents who are spurred by a mix of dandified notions of breeding and commodification:

Regardless of how their time and money is being handled, the amateur child models of Instagram are already more famous on the Internet than most of your co-workers. There’s 4-year-old London Scout, with 105,000 followers; 2-year-old Millie-Belle Diamond, with 143,000; 4-year-old Michelle (154,000); Gavin (200,000); and the Mini Style Hacker (260,000). Then there’s the prince of Instagram: Alonso Mateo,with more than 600,000 followers. He recently attended the Dior show at Paris Fashion Week.

This may just be the diametrical opposite of Weird Twitter no one was asking for, except a rarefied sort of pedophile, one supposes:

Sometimes adults are drawn to the feed: people who post comments on their own Instagram pages like “Can I be her?” or “She’s become my style inspo” or “I love the hair!!!!”

Translation: "I am a a little bit of a pedophile"

Unlike Weird Twitter, a quick survey of the Instagram accounts revealed nary a reference to bowel movements or flatulence befitting of the two-to-five year old demographic. Yet the bucks at stake can be big with deals negotiated with Gwyneth Paltrow's company (which has spawned its own hate read cottage industry):

And marketers are also taking an interest. Athena Rotolo, who owns the Mini Life website, said she was pleased with the transactions she has struck with Ms. Cannon. “She requests certain items that fit in for the style of the shoot and then I send them off to her,” Ms. Rotolo said. “So instead of me having to hire someone and pay all those fees, it’s a mutual relationship.” 

The biggest star in this pageant of child image pimping is London Scout (journalist Hayley Krischer notes these are her first and middle names) who graced New York Fashion week in "a pink and navy faux fur coat, waving to a crowd of photographers":

“It was like she had her own little paparazzi,” said her mother, Sai De Silva, who runs the feed. London Scout is living #scoutstyle and schooling followers on how to #gettheLondonlook. And because London’s mother, 34 and a self-described social-media strategist, is as photogenic as her daughter, there are also the hashtags #mommydaughtermoments and #ScoutMomstyle.

#Vomit is all we can say. At least Ms. Krischer, chronicler of the "edgy tales from parenthood," is attuned to both the violations of childhood and labor law that might ensure. Enter the admittedly cute Princeton Cannon-Roberts and his mother, Keira Cannon, a pastry chef, perhaps the least offensive of the parent-child business partnerships covered:

But Princeton is not a teenager. He is 5 years old. A happy-seeming little boy, he played with his scooter, balanced on the curb, twirled in endless circles but only had so much tolerance for the professional photographer whom Ms. Cannon, 38 and a pastry chef, had hired to populate his Instagram feed, Prince and the Baker, which has more than 5,600 followers.

When the photographer attempted to coax him to pose for one more shot with the Brooklyn Bridge behind him, he gave her a polite, “No thanks.” It didn’t help that children were riding past him on scooters of their own, or bicycles.

Princeton might do well to avoid applying to his eponym in twelve years to avoid the appearance of redundancy on his resumé. But, as always, indulgences can sometimes be forgiven: Ms. Cannon is not only a pastry chef, but a military veteran who grew up in the South Bronx. His father, a graphic designer, also voiced reasonable-sounding concerns and a desire to limit overexposure.

But we spare no wrath or fecal discharge upon Angelica Calad, a Paltrow wannabe  whose son, at the ripe old age of two, already has garnered 112,000 followers (trigger warning: Ms. Calad dresses her infant children in culturally insensitive outfits):

“Taylen has become a brand,” said her mother, Angelica Calad, 33 and the owner and designer of POMP Kids, an online clothing business in Davie, Fla. Ms. Calad’s Instagram feed, Taylen’s Mom, is a devoted chronicle of Taylen and Aleia, Ms. Calad’s infant daughter, in high-fashion outfits. In one photo, Taylen wears a retro Esther Williams-inspired dusty rose bodysuit with ribbon shoulder straps, glitter-adorned bottoms and a bow tie. In another, Aleia wears peach merino overalls and a white-feathered chieftain headdress. 

If your head is not spinning, go read some bell hooks, Derrick Bell, or do whatever you need to do to deal with what just happened above. If you want to take action, just call Florida's Department of Children and Families' Abuse Hotline. For our part, we merely ask, what is a peach merino overall? Also, what is an Aleia? Why is Aleia in a "chieftain" headdress? As if all of this were not enough, Ms. Calad has partnered with what we can only imagine is a sort of anti-social, nihilistic terrorist organization whose acronym happens to also be KKK:

In the course of one weekend, Ms. Calad booked back-to-back shoots for Taylen and Aleia. She said she is also in talks to develop a network television show for Taylen and is branching out into home décor. But the real get is that Taylen is headlining the holiday campaign for Kardashian Kids Kollection, a relationship that began, Ms. Calad said, when she was approached by a publicist for the Kardashian line through Instagram.

Several child psychologists consulted in the article expressed concerns about developing these children "pro-social values" and preventing "higher-than-usual social anxiety" or the children starting "crave [attention]...in unhealthy ways." For their part, the parents are more focused on "online predators" with apparent lack of awareness of the potential irony that they are the online predators:

Regardless of the potential psychological effects, the mothers interviewed for this article said they feared online predators. “You never know who’s behind a profile,” said Mia St. Clair, 29, a professional photographer in Spokane, Wash. Her son Grey, 3, is at the epicenter of Grey’s Little Closet. They have over 28,000 followers.

Ms. St Clair's husband, also quoted in the article, is the "director of media and communications at Calvary Spoke, a church." (Apparently "media and communications" is the new word for proselytizing?) Well, they better start praying hard for little Grey's forgiveness.

Pageants are so passé