"Newborn shot (newbornshot)." Actress Lee Si-young has been swept up in an unexpected controversy over newborn photos of her second child. Was the problem the doll-like baby photos? Coldly speaking, alongside a backlash against an already commodified lifestyle, it's time to reflect on people's insatiable curiosity about others.
Lee Si-young recently posted on her personal social media newborn photos of her second daughter, the so-called "newborn shot," also called "Born Art," and found herself under public scrutiny. Posing next to a Christmas tree doll, looking more doll-like than the doll itself, the child was transformed as if into a Santa ornament, and she playfully asked, "How about this as this year's Christmas ornament?" portraying the child as cute like a baby, which drew criticism. The reason given was that she "treated a newborn like a decoration."
In reality, the "newborn shot" is a concept shoot parents around the world try when they have a baby. Newborns, who were curled up in their mother's womb, find the curled position more comfortable as they adjust to life outside after birth. For that reason, even in the middle of summer various swaddling products are sold to prevent the moro reflex.
With that in mind, various concept photo shoots aimed at capturing a curled-up baby attractively are introduced. On social media, searching hashtags like "newborn shot" or "newborn photography" yields many example photos. Scenes of tiny newborns, small enough to fit in a basket, evoke both cuteness and awe at the effort required for such small babies to become adults.
Ahead of the coming Christmas, Lee Si-young decorated her child like a Santa ornament. While many mothers and parents of newborns choose that type of shoot and some said it was understandable, there remains a firm view that treating a child like an object never looks good, and the two responses continue to clash.
The period in which humans record the most growth is the first year of life. The time it takes for a newborn, the size of an upper arm, to take its first steps and babble to seek its parents is the period of greatest physical change in an era of 100-year lifespans. To remember even a single moment of this period accurately, various record-keeping methods existed even before social media or the convenient cameras in our hands. Someday as a large framed photo, or as film photographs, and even in the days without photographic technology, parents kept countless records from infant shirts to first birthday clothes that became family relics in each home. Of course the methods and means differ, but it is questionable whether a moment of Lee Si-young's second daughter that she wanted to preserve should be criticized as something that must "never" be done.
Looking back coldly, this is not the first time Lee Si-young's social media has sparked controversy. When she hiked carrying her first son on her back, voices urging caution about the child's safety were loud, and her preference for flashy luxury fashion and lifestyle generated dislike as ostentatious. Above all, her second child stirred heated debate because the pregnancy and birth followed an in vitro fertilization embryo that was not discarded during a divorce and resulted in childbirth after the divorce. Might the accumulation of such criticisms make even a common "newborn shot" unacceptable?
Still, to claim that Lee Si-young invited the series of criticisms seems like a leap. The aftermath is that because she posts her life on social media, reactions that treat others' lives like a product review or exhibition have become dominant. Short of criminality, there can be no preferences in the world that are absolutely forbidden. We have enjoyed much because of that freedom. Observation and judgment are distinctly different, and personal opinion and public debate are separate matters. How exhausting are the unnecessary controversies that arise when that line wavers? Especially the vague standards that surround public figures who share their lives with many people — do the resulting arguments only increase our fatigue?
[Photo] source: SNS, OSEN DB
[OSEN]