On July 10, Harper Beckham turned five years old.
In honor of her daughter, Victoria Beckham shared the following photo on Instagram, including with the image a caption that reads:
“Happy Birthday baby girl… We all love you so much… kisses from mummy.”
Pretty basic, right?
Pretty nice and normal and loving and there’s nothing else to say about this picture, right?
We wish.
We really wish that were it.
In response to the picture, however, online trolls expressed disgust and outrage over the former Spice Girl kissing her offspring on the lips.
“Horrible pic. David Beckhams birthday pic is much nicer and a lot less controversial than this stupid bitches,” someone actually wrote.
We wish we could say this person was alone in his or her response.
But take a look below. This user, sadly, was not…
Seriously, people really did write those things about a mother giving her daughter a kiss.
Even those who defended Beckham did so in a back-handed, overly analytical way.
They saw this picture and somehow found it necessary to turn it into a commentary on love and parenthood and society.
See what we mean here:
Parental shaming has become the new, unfortunate norm on the Internet.
Last week, critics slammed Kristin Cavallari for supposedly not feeding her children, based on a solitary photo of them at the beach.
People also took issue with Bristol Palin’s daughter posing near some fake guns.
And this really has to stop.
All of these parents are doing the very best they can. They clearly love their children. And you have no idea what’s really going on at home between these family members.
It’s cruel to judge. It’s misguided. And it’s just mean.
It’s a cliche, but it’s also true: imagine if strangers on the World Wide Web slammed your parenting skills (or anything about you) based on a single image.
Imagine how you would feel.
Imagine that and then think twice before doing it to someone else.
