by Anna Maria Ryan

Created on: June 01, 2009   Last Updated: June 22, 2009

Exploitation of children is wrong, no matter what age they are. Whether their famous parents give the fee they receive to charity or not is irrelevant. They are still taking an action that could result in regret, embarrassment and even danger for that child. Is that really something good parents would do? No, but celebrity parents would. Anything to make those fifteen minutes of fame shine a little longer.

As an adult we can choose to do whatever we like. If we want to be an astronaut, and want to put the work in to achieve that, we can do it. If someone wants to be a stripper and make their living that way, they can do it, that is their choice. Babies appearing in high or low class magazines, depending on the celebrity, have been denied the right to make that choice. Why does society accept this? Because celebrities are today's royalty and nobility. They live lives that we can only dream of and we need to know everything about them.

It doesn't seem to matter how far up the showbiz ladder a person is, they will not skip a chance to get a little more cash or publicity. So you have the high rankers like Angelina Jolie and the ones at the very bottom like Kerry Katona opening up their homes a few weeks after giving birth to their precious little bundles, greedy hands out, taking payments from the paparazzi vultures. Just because they have sold their souls for a slice of fame, shouldn't mean it's OK for them to sell their infant's first moments, pushing them into the spotlight before they even know how to smile.

If people such as Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, Jordan and the rest wish to live their lives in the public eye, it is up to them. Though I may not agree with what some of them do for a lving, it is their choice and they're adults, so little can be done to change what they are doing, whether it be taking off their clothes for a movie, taking off their clothes for a magazine or jumping up and down on a talk show host's couch, it is fully within their rights to do that. However, when they sell pictures of their children to magazines they are performing an action that effects directly another person's life, yet this person has absolutely no choice about it. This is not right, and it should not be accepted.

When these babies grow up they have to live with these pictures for the rest of their lives. They have to live with the knowledge that their parents were so desperate for fame or so greedy for cash that they not only sold their own rights to privacy but they sold their kids' too. Because of the phenomenon of celebrity and the general public's obsession with it, their will be a lot of children of famous parents keeping L.A. therapists very rich in the future.

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