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August 9, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Wearing heavy makeup and a décolletage cut to the waist, the model for a recent Vogue photo shoot reclines on a leopard print bed as her blue eyes stare icily at the camera. In other shots, she wears heavy jewelry and spiked heels as she rests her body along a tiger skin.

The only quality that separates Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau from a typical haute couture fashion model is that she’s only ten years old.

Many viewers expressed shock and horror after the girl appeared in a 15-page French Vogue spread, guest-edited by fashion designer Tom Ford in January.

“The sexualisation of children is one of the most pernicious ills of our era. They should not have done this,” said Labor MP Helen Goodman, according to the Daily Mail. The international pro-family group Mother’s Union agreed, saying that the hyper-sexualized photos “deny Miss Blondeau the right to be the child she is.”

The Daily Beast notes that Blondeau has walked the runway since the tender age of four, and has since been photographed topless, with only a wooden bead necklace covering part of her breasts.

Other Internet observers also seemed not to buy the shoot’s fresh take on sexuality. “This isn’t edgy. It’s inappropriate, and creepy,” said one blogger on Tumbler noted by the Mail.

“She has the facial expression of a child whose images are found in illegal child pornography. Sarcastic, unsmiling, passive aggressive,” noted another observer of a photo gallery at TheGloss.com.

Thylane’s mother, Veronika Loubry, closed her daughter’s Facebook account and a Tumblr photo blog entitled “F**k Yeah Thylane Blondeau” last week after the risqué images went viral.

Her final post on the Facebook page indicated something had gone awry involving a “bad person” in America thanks to the photos. “Something going ‘s [sic] wrong at the moment with Thylane and bad personn in usa [sic] about pictures she make’s 8 mounths [sic] ago for Vogue,” wrote Loubry before the page was dismantled.

International youth advocates say the disturbing shoot exemplifies why the sexualization of younger and younger children must be strongly opposed.

“Everyone knows that the fashion industry frequently uses sexual attraction to market their goods.  That isn’t unusual. What is unusual and disturbing about a 10 year old doing provocative modeling is that it is evidence of a shift in society’s sexual tastes,” Tyler Ament, director of the International Youth Coalition (IYc), told LifeSiteNews.com.

That shift can be traced in part to pressure from one major international lobby: Ament noted that ending age-based “discrimination” of children’s sexuality is a major priority of global population control groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

“Sexuality and sexual pleasure are important parts of being human for everyone – no matter what age,” said IPPF in its guide to “sexual rights” for young people issued at the UN this summer. The pamphlet goes on to to list abortion-on-demand as essential to “youth-friendly” health services.

IYc presented at the United Nations last month a petition signed by 57,000 youth opposing the “sexual rights” movement, which Ament said had a clear financial incentive for the international abortion and contraception business.

“They want to get these girls started young, since they have ideological and fiscal interests in such a venture,” he said.