Naked babies on the internet
Sun, 06/26/2011 - 10:46am
As some of you may or may not know I've just returned from Russia with my sister and her newly adopted 10 month old baby Lorelei. That first day with her was so amazing. Of course we took a ton of pictures and a few short videos. Being the proud mother and uncle that we are we rapidly posted a lot of them on Facebook. A couple of them were of Lulu's (that's her nickname) first bath. She was pretty darn cute if I do say so myself. After a couple of hours we were a bit distressed to receive an email from one of my sister's friends warning us to remove all "naked" pictures of the baby from the Internet in fear of online sex predators. "Really?" we thought. Needless to say it made us feel kind of crummy to have to think about that in such a moment of joy and wonder. We chose to ignore her at first but then decided not to take any chances. My sister still had to meet with the Russian Embassy the next day in which there would some kind of interview and we just didn't want to risk anything at this point. We removed all pics of her in her birthday suit along with the "first bath" video which I thought was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. We just wanted to share that joy.
So, my question is: Was this lady right? Do we live in a world now that is so conservative or paranoid that we can't share the pure joy of a beautiful little baby just as God (or pick your source label) made her? Of course we would never want to do anything that could cause her any future harm or embarrassment. Or is it an invasion of her privacy? Exactly at what age is it not okay to post naked pics of your child on the Internet? Even though she is only 10 months does she have a say in this? Is one of the consequences of our wonderful global Internet village the banning of all cute naked baby pics? If so that world just got a little bit sadder for me.
(Here is our G rated ride home vid http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1922253369067&comments , more pics of Lulu and Moscow: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150227527987441.315232.711847440)
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I'm pretty sure most parents take bathtub pics of their babies. I know I did. But if you're worried about future embarrassment of Lulu, keep 'em private. Now that I'm 800 miles from my kids I post them to their journals & FB's from time to time, since I don't have to worry about my kids beating me to death or having me placed in a rather poor nursing home by swearing I'm senile & a threat to myself & the world. Those pics embarrass the crap out of them, but they're pure gold to me. MY BABIES!!! I loves them loads!
BTW, my babies are 26 & 23 now. The last thing they want are their nudie baby pics out where their friends & co-workers can see them. I'm good for a few death threats whenever I post them so I don't post them often, just when I'm feeling nostalgic.
As for pedophiles. The world can be an evil place filled with evil people. Keep the video's & pics friends only & I think they would be okay, then again, what do I know?
Yes, its me. You may now genuflect.