Do you like babies? Me neither! I mean, what the hell, babies? Your only talent is looking vaguely cute and asking annoying questions all the time. We already have someone who does that on TV every day named Katie Couric! What else can you bring to the table?
At least Alonso, age 5, is attempting to diversify his baby portfolio. Alonso is something of an Instagram sensation, a diapered popular page demigod amongst people who like pictures of babies and/or pictures of expensive sneakers. All he needs is a photo of himself being cradled by the ethnic one from One Direction and he might actually destroy the nation’s largest 4G network (sorry AT&T).
Oh, and he also has a MILF-y mom. I know, I know, burying the lede.
Luisa, Alonso’s mother and a fan of fashion herself, is the driving force responsible for making her toddler look like someone with a GED. Luisa frequently takes to her Instagram account to document her son’s every look (or “lewk” as the case may be). Slouchy beanie and denim jacket? Check. Drop crotch pants and combat boots? Oh, you know he has that. Fashionable high-end parody tee? Got it! Does Alonso get it? I hope not, because he’s five. Throw in his fashion boy haircut and some oversized sunglasses and he’s basically a 24-year-old Los Angeleno on his way to another audition.
Except that he’s not.
I’m not questioning Luisa’s parenting skills—the kid looks happy and healthy in every photo—but I do have to wonder what happened to letting a kid be just that, a kid.
People, who have an interest in fashion, dressing their babies up like miniature adults is not new—See: celebrity kids, the ultra-disturbing #babyfashion tag on Tumblr, the French Vogue baby model controversy and every Wednesday night on Bravo where you can watch Rachel Zoe’s son, whose wardrobe and ability to express himself coherently rival that of his parents. So in that sense, Alonso, or really, Luisa, is just an example of a bigger trend.
Luisa says that Alonso likes dressing up, although she admits to fully styling him each day. No kidding! When you think about what a 5-year-old does—namely run around and play with toys—it’s hard to imagine untied boots and oversized scarves being their first choice when they reach into their wardrobe every morning. It’s also hard to imagine 5-year-olds reaching into their wardrobe every morning, since they’re, you know, five-fucking-years-old.
So, what does dressing her child up like an adult and posting his photo each day actually accomplish? Well, it lets Luisa amass crazy amounts of Instagram followers (almost 84,000 at the time of writing this) who, in turn, and this might come to a shock to some of you, see photos of Luisa too. It lets her grant interviews to blogs where she talks about her own style as much as her son’s. Presumably, it provides some interest in the URL Luisa has listed on her profile for FakeRoyals.com, whatever that is. It also invites comments from followers who remark things like, “that kid is a pimp.”
And that’s particularly funny because it seems to me that the kid isn’t the pimp in this scenario.
No, the kid is a kid. A toddler. A baby, even. He is not a fashion plate.
Calling out the downside to overzealous social media usage permeating every aspect of our lives is so cliché that it’s boring, but seriously: Thank whatever God you believe in that Facebook and Twitter and Instagram didn’t exist when you were a child because it’s ruining everything—even the innocent years before people can form a fully realized thought, let alone an identity of their own, without 84,000 sets of prying eyes asking where a baby bought his goddamn meggings. It’s created a world in which a mother went from saying that her son isn’t a model, she just has fun dressing him up to styling him out in full-on photoshoots in less than a year. It’s a monster that allows an ordinary baby’s name to come to life as a hashtag associated with over 2,000 photos of him, many posted by people neither he, nor his parents, have ever met.
I’m not questioning Luisa’s parenting skills—the kid looks happy and healthy in every photo—but I do have to wonder what happened to letting a kid be just that, a kid.
However intolerable that may be.
Steve Dool is a writer based in New York City. Follow him on Twitter.
