The Bonds Baby Search shortlist was announced. And then this happened.

The Bonds Baby Search has once again brought out the truly worst in people.

After the winners of the 2014 Bonds Baby Competition were announced, which this year beautifully included two children with Down Syndrome, site moderators had to remind parents to “be positive and respectful” after their comments turned completely feral.

This unfortunately proved difficult for some people.

After calling most of the children “Hideous” and “Ugly”, one woman from New Zealand wrote “Obviously not going by looks or Australian’ of the Bonds Baby Search Facebook site.

Another woman also weighed in my writing “OMG they definitely didn’t choose the cutest bubs”.

Say what now?

If you aren’t familiar with the Bonds Baby Competition, here’s a quick rundown.

Every year, the clothes brand Bonds, invites parents to send in pictures of their children, aged 0-4, preferably dressed in a Bonds outfit. These pictures are then displayed and voted upon by the general public and by the people at Bonds to determine the winners and runner-ups in each category. So yes, it’s basically a modelling contest for tiny humans. 62,000 people entered their children this year and of those, only a handful were shortlisted.

It’s hard to work out if the main motivation for success here was the potential of being featured in a Bonds’ advertising campaign or the $300 Bonds’ gift card, but if I could hazard a guess, it would be more about the bragging rights.

Let’s face it; we all like to think that our own child is the cutest thing to ever grace this planet. Even if, in years to come, we look back and realise they actually no, they kind of looked like a potato for their first three months. We will still however, maintain that they were and are, beautiful because you know what? Babies and children are ALWAYS beautiful.

This morning on Fox FM’s Fifi & Dave’, Fifi Box slammed the online trolls who targeted the infants via social media after the announcement of the Bonds Baby Search Winners:

“If you’re listening and you are somebody that has sniggered or made a nasty comment about a baby, just pause for a second, just reflect on who you are as a person and if you feel good about yourself.”

Fifi went on to say:

“When it comes to competitions with children, this is always a very divisive topic because you have parents that will not enter their babies to be judged and criticised, and then you have other parents that just think, “Well I want to celebrate the beauty of my baby and I know it’s not about winning or losing”. Now, we are talking about the Bonds Baby Competition because the finalists were revealed yesterday and, on the Baby Bonds Facebook page, people who, I think they’re claiming to be people, they’re claiming to be human, but they are writing the most horrendous comments about babies. We must remember this, comments like “hideous”, “ugly”, “I can’t believe they won, there’s so many better babies than those”. I think sometimes with social media people, they disconnect their brains and maybe they’re in a room on their own late at night and they’ve just become delirious and they’ve forgotten how to be kind, generous people – warm people.”

As terrible as a select few have been, discussing the looks of CHILDREN, there was also a silver lining. Beautiful baby Ruby’s mother Sarah Kiss had this to say, “I hope everyone can see that everyone should be treated equally and everyone is beautiful no matter what.”

Parents though, didn’t just stop at throwing horrid barbs around Facebook, going further and accusing Bonds of unfair enforcement of their eligibility rules, particularly when it came to be photographed in an actual Bonds Wondersuit.

In fact, they were more than happy to condemn the Bonds Search as nothing more than “a Facebook popularity contest”.

Well, DERR. Part of the process is about engaging friends, family and anyone you can possibly cajole into voting for your child. The person with the largest friend circle, is bound to have a better chance at success.

Todd Hayward, a spokesman on behalf of Bonds, said more than 250,000 people’s choice votes were registered in the competition.

“It was a real joy to see so many adorable faces over the last two months and we thank everybody who participated, the vast majority of whom did so in a positive and respectful way,” he said.

At the end of the day, your child is not a commodity, they are not defined by how many people ‘like’ them on Facbook. Sure, it’s a great and wonderful thing if they get chosen but again, it doesn’t mean that they reign supreme over any other child. The people at Bonds have clearly seen something in each and every child that they have chosen and we as parents should only celebrate and respect this.

So you know, those nasty and jealous trolls should really get a grip. They’re not doing anyone a favour, especially not their own children, by behaving this way.

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