Every mother thinks that her child is the most gorgeous, beautiful baby on earth. Of course, she’s probably mistaken about her views, and statistics would probably prove her wrong, but anyone who cares to voice out their disagreement would have to be clinically insane. It’s easier to just agree that yes, her baby is just adorable and yes, her baby is just the cutest little thing you’ve ever seen. Problems, however, will arise when these mothers of the ‘best babies in the world’ are brought together and pitted against each other in a baby competition, just like in the Bonds Beautiful Baby Competition. Things took a pretty nasty turn when people started posting negative comments on the clothing brand’s Facebook site where the pictures were posted.

Glitch = Insanity

17,000 mothers entered their babies in the competition last year, all of them hoping that their child would be the one chosen among all the others at the Bonds Baby Search. This year, however, more than 52,000 babies were entered into the competition, making it impossibly difficult to judge. To make matters more complicated, Bonds decided to add a ‘People’s Choice’ component to the competition. It’s a tried and tested method to improve traffic and gain more publicity – but then again, this was also where all the trouble began. Mothers immediately began campaigning for their babies, urging all their friends and relatives to go to the Bonds’ site and vote. The heavy traffic caused the site to crash, and a lot of people had difficulties in voting for their picks. You could vote for some babies, but not for others. This caused a lot of tempers to flare, which led to heaps of complaints on the Bonds Facebook Page. It also led to a couple of negative comments from some of the meaner mothers out there.

Racism and Uglyism

When teenagers are bullied, it’s bad. When eight year olds are bullied, it’s nasty. But when little infants are bullied – it’s not just bad, not just nasty, not even just atrocious; it’s downright evil. Yet there were a lot of people who took to bullying in this Bonds competition. One baby was saddled with the phrase “a child only a mother could love.” Another one was called “ugly duckling”. There was even a Eurasian baby who got attacked with a racist comment saying “Bonds Australia not Asia”. The mothers were appalled at what transpired and a lot of people rose to the defense of the helpless little chaps who became victims of racism and ‘uglyism’ – though, how anybody could consider a baby ‘ugly’ is just perplexing. The organizers of the competition sent out an announcement admonishing those who dared to make such negative comments and also telling everyone that such comments would be deleted immediately.

Still, there’s always one comment that makes it through and manages to survive long enough for people to read, like this one from a guy named Mitchell Atom Heart Capraro: “All yer kids are sh**”. His comment was quickly deleted, but then he followed it up with another one saying the same thing.

It will be interesting to see how this fiasco turns out for Bonds, and if they try it again next year.