Oversharing: It’s Mummy and Daddy dangling their little ones over the digital balcony.

Amanda Holden recently found herself at the centre of a storm of controversy after posting that picture of her daughter dressed in a red off the shoulder frock, adorned with jewels and plastered in full make-up.  

 

Originally billed as attending a 90s theme day at school dressed up as Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman, that was hastily retracted due to an immediate online backlash. The explainer stated that little Lexie was instead the original and most wholesome supermodel of them all, Cindy Crawford. There’s barely a person in any land (parent or otherwise) who doesn’t have a multitude of opinions on this story and here, for the record, is mine.

 

I think every little girl (and boy) has the right to play dress up.  Some of my most treasured childhood memories are the many days spent doing just that with my pals. Anita’s mum worked at night selling party plan make-up and we spent endless afternoons as six-year-olds beautifying ourselves with her samples.

 

Fiona’s aunt lived the oh-so-exotic existence of a cabaret singer in LA and frequently sent home elaborate stage costumes that had passed their sell-by date and many a wet winter’s day was whiled away by us swanning around her house in sequined boob tubes, fake furs and feather boas.

 

In recent years, I’ve regularly returned home from work to find my wardrobe door ajar and my kids (boys included) parading around the landing in my ‘hee-hile’ shoes. It’s part of what kids do. It’s normal, as is a childhood spent trying to emulate famous and glamourous adults of note (I’m not so proud as to admit to being so old that in my case it was Olivia Newton John). I’m also fairly certain that my parents probably photographed such crimes against style. Taking snaps of your offspring, whether dressed up or not, is hardly a crime. So far I’m with Amanda.

 

But (and this is a really enormous, unashamed, unambiguous, capital-lettered, shouting-out-loud ‘BUT’) should such innocent childhood pursuits be shared in the large black hole that is the digital world? Well my resolute (and equally enormous, unashamed, unambiguous, capital-lettered,) answer to that is NO.

 

Amanda Holden’s case is extreme. She has 1.7 million followers on Twitter, all of whom were made privy to her daughter’s dressing up exploits, many of whom reacted negatively. But I hardly think that’s the point. No matter if the number is 7 or 1.7 million, my humble opinion is that those who create a digital footprint for their offspring before they reach voting age are teetering on the brink of an infringement of human rights.

 

We’re all guilty of it to some extent. Just in case you think I’m straying into lecturing territory here let me state my mea culpa. I too have revealed nuggets of my children’s lives on Facebook. Who hasn’t? Most of us have hastened the warnings about the damage we can do to our own reputations by oversharing online. The recruitment experts are always telling us how prospective employers do a digital search on prospective job candidates (yes, if you’re in the jobs market, that photo of your mate holding your hair while you hurled at the Christmas party may well mean you won’t get an interview slot).

 

While most of us pay some attention to curating our own online persona, we’re blindly ignoring the fact that we’re outing our kids for all to see.  We’re all clued in to the potential dangers and threats to our children on the world wide web – what we’re not seeing is that in many cases it’s Mummy and Daddy that are dangling their little ones ‘Wacko Jacko’ style over the digital balcony.

 

So while we rush to condemn Amanda and her ilk for ill thought out parenting maybe take some time out to think are we oversharing too?