Another day, another mother earns a dollar (or two) on her child’s back.
This time it’s not one of the usual suspects – those dodgy mom influencers, Katie “Mucky Mansion” Price or even one of the heinous Kardashians. Step forward Heidi Klum instead.
The 49-year-old presenter of America’s Got Talent has again raised her breasts and buttocks in the expensive underwear of the Italian giant Intimissimi. And again she has inexplicably trotted out her teenage daughter in the same bra panties.
My eyes! What did the ad gurus think behind this campaign?
Unless you’ve had a lobotomy, I bet you would agree with me and silently pronounce it as terribly bad behavior.
Criticism: Heidi Klum was hit with backlash after sharing a post in which she poses in lingerie next to her 18-year-old daughter
But that’s thirsty social media obsessed 2023 for you.
And in the obsessive pursuit of those Insta followers — Klum has 10 million and her daughter has 1.7 million — there are no limits when it comes to monetizing motherhood.
Klum — who celebrated reaching 10 million Instagram followers by eating cake from her crotch — has clearly lost her grip on her mommy moral compass.
Because what this is saying to us potential customers isn’t “buy this fancy underwear,” but the off-brand message broadcast is, “Celebrities clearly don’t care how they make their money.” If that also means whipping their own flesh in addition to that of their children? No problem!’
Of course, Victoria’s Secret model Heidi Klum is no stranger to taking off her gear. The woman has lived for decades pretty much in her underwear and little else. Good for her. If she wants to make money that way, fine.
Still, it seems the internet agrees with me that the current mother-and-daughter lingerie campaign is, in a word, creepy.
Is the creepy claim justified? I think so. A close look at the ad shows a very vulnerable and clumsy-looking 18-year-old strapped in underwear more suited to the robust body of a middle-aged woman. What teen resents molded underwired bras and intricate-looking, spangly lace knickers?
As for Heidi? She may think she looks good, but she looks less MILF and more like she’s coming to the end of her sexy sell-by date.
In 2022, Heidi Klum and daughter Leni were unveiled as the new face of lingerie brand Intimissimi, in addition to the above lingerie photoshoot
Naysayers will berate female columnists like me for being jealous.
But nothing is less true. My mantra in life is ‘you do you’. In this case, Heidi is doing what she likes – but is that also true of her daughter?
Mothers acknowledging that there is hard money to be made from their daughters’ flesh was a constant way before the terms “supermodel” and “influencer” were ever formed.
Think of actresses Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster. When their mothers thought it was fine for Foster as a teenager to act as a prostitute and for an 11-year-old Shields to look topless as well.
No wonder they had complicated relationships with their mother during their adult years. Who on earth can blame them? Mothers are supposed not to publicly promote their daughters’ fragile physical forms.
Disturbingly, it’s the norm for most female celebrities to want to hold onto their profile and make money when they get pregnant. They get a taste of the easy extra moolah while their kids are in the womb. No wonder they continue to use their offspring to make money as they grow up.
As if they would stop when their children are old enough to make their own career decisions?
New Campaign: The supermodel, 49, recently took to her social media platform for their latest Intimissimi campaign. But Heidi faced a wave of backlash over the photoshoot
The supermodel showed off her figure as she struck a series of poses in a lilac and white lace lingerie set
And let’s face it, it’s not like Klum is struggling and struggling to pay the bills. She lives the gilded, clichéd life in the posh Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air. According to Celebrity Net Worth, she’s worth $160 million — to put it bluntly, it’s not like she needs the money.
Yet she is not alone – and that is the problem. How many model moms have used their daughters’ looks and enviable youth to revive their fading careers? Think Jerry Hall and her younger girls. Cindy Crawford has been trotting for years with daughter Kaia Gerber. It’s fair to say that these women are unapologetically using their children to keep themselves relevant.
It’s not a big deal right? Well, that’s it actually. So many faces have come out and said they regretted (and then some) the types of underwear modeling campaigns they were involved in as teens. Kate Moss told Vanity Fair that she was not comfortable with modeling as a teenager. In the interview, she reflected on the 1992 Calvin Klein shoot she starred in with Mark Wahlberg and said she regretted it: “I had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18 when I had to start working with Marky Mark and Herb Ritts. ‘
Kelly Brook is no different, reflecting on her underwear modeling experience as a teenager, “Of course I look back on it and I think there was something about it that… I was very young.”
“It was good money, but then again, to have someone that age pose like that… I guess that’s probably not great.”
British actress Samantha Womack also said the same thing: ‘I wish I had understood at the time. I’m very pro-women and I like women to be sexy, but there were some pictures I took that were pretty humiliating.
“There were a few when the tone was wrong. It was explicit, and when you’re young you don’t understand the impact of those issues. You’re not a woman yet.’
However you look at this tawdry, tacky campaign, it has little to do with selling underwear and much more to do with a smart, tough-as-nails businesswoman making money off the backs of her nubile brood. Other photos on the teen’s Instagram feed show her looking confused in the same ad campaign — and who can blame her? Who would want to be a Nepo Baby in the Klum household? No thanks. A very wise Instagram commenter on Klum’s feed speaks for all of us: “I wouldn’t be proud to show off my daughter like this. I would feel ashamed and sad.”
Klum – take note.