Celebrity building spawnage

This has been on my mind ever since the newest celebrity babies (the Jolie-Pitt/ Pitt-Jolie twins) joined our sorry world. Children as accessories, then. I’m thinking of the adoptees from third-world countries, in the main.* I’m also thinking of the likes of the following (from popbitch of all places).

We thought in the West the days of child slavery were, thankfully, over. Yet for many of the children of celebrities, a life born into slavery even from the first weeks of life, beckons.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt waited barely three weeks before turning their twins into cash cows, putting them to work in front of the cameras for a multi-million pound fee. No matter that the fee was for a good cause, it was their children who had to earn it.

OK! magazine’s repost to Hello’s Brangelina exclusive this week was to bring out its big guns, in the shape of Jordan. Her daughter, Princess, got to celebrate her first birthday by helping her “uncle” Richard Desmond sell copies of his magazine. Jordan’s willingness to tell the world that her one-year old daughter never wears the same things twice and has a hundred pairs of shoes ensured OK! had as many column inches as Hello.

And in LA, the Beckhams’ continuing quest for even more fame saw David pick up an award at the Teen Choice Awards. And helping make sure he got the most coverage from the event, his three boys, in matching outfits (and haircuts just like their Dad, to ram the point home) also had to get up on stage and act up, like performing monkeys.

Surely as concerned, right-thinking citizens we should support the work of the anti-child slavery movement by shunning these harsh taskmasters?

Children there, building celebrity cred since 1998. And you all thought it was about shoes and handbags. Well it’s not. It’s about dressing your children up in finery that costs a small fortune, parading them in front of cameras looking cute and just that little bit precocious, and selling pictures of them to whoever bids the highest. It has a sort of pimping feel to it, frankly.

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* Imma gonna save them there little brown babies from sure peril for what would they do without us selfless and beautiful Americans! I don’t want an ugly one, mind. Or a fat one. Or one with eyes too far apart. Or one with too much hair. Or one with too little hair. Or one with strange eyes. Or one that’s too big. Or one that’s ugly. Have I mentioned that already?