Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Social media timelines are a lot like middle school hallways: loud, messy, and always looking for the next person to whisper about. This week, the name on everyone’s lips was North West.
After photos surfaced of Kim Kardashian’s and Kanye West’s daughter walking around Rome with her mother, social media lit up with commentary about her outfit, which included striking blue pigtails, a black corset top, a frilly grey and black skater skirt, black boots, and a heart-shaped Vivienne Westwood purse.
The look instantly sparked debate. While some users critiqued North’s electric-blue hair, most zeroed in on the corset, arguing that it created the illusion of cleavage and sexualized the pre-teen
One user wrote on Threads, “There’s no way a 12-year-old should be dressed like this 😑”
Another added, “Everything is justifiable for a preteen except the corset. No matter how your body is shaped, whether it was North or Penelope (because ppl like to bring race into it) a corset, which is intended to accentuate the waist and bust, is never appropriate for a child.”
And yet, there’s something unsettling about the sheer intensity of the discourse.
If you’re a Black girl growing up, people rarely let you just be. They’ll call your hair “too grown” if you try a new style. They’ll say your clothes “invite the wrong attention” before you’ve even figured out what your own body means to you. And now, in the era of parasocial parenting, strangers feel deputized to comment on children they don’t know beyond a paparazzi snapshot.
This conversation around North isn’t new; it’s inherited. We saw it when Blue Ivy dared to wear a strapless gown to the “Lion King” premiere, and the internet somehow decided a child’s red-carpet fashion choice was an existential threat to girlhood. These conversations feel like deja vu, as they spew the same rhetoric our aunties, mamas, and grandmothers used to wield, warning us about looking “too grown” or acting “too fast,” as if policing a hemline, hairstyle, or nail polish color could shield Black girls from a world already eager to sexualize them.
Back then, it came from a place of love mixed with generational fear. But when it comes from millions of strangers on the internet, it’s surveillance disguised as concern.
Many commenters claim their critiques are rooted in concern for North’s safety in an industry notorious for exploiting young girls. Yet, the avalanche of videos and posts dissecting her body and outfit only fuels a heightened surveillance that she, as the daughter of two global celebrities, is already burdened with. Policing her outfit doesn’t shield her. It just reinforces the very gaze people claim to be worried about.
North is 12. Twelve is braces and best friends. Twelve is awkward puberty years where your body is doing things faster than your brain can process. Twelve is trying on aesthetics like costumes until one feels right. You don’t need the internet to remind you of that tension; every mirror, every hallway whisper already tends to do that.
So, yes, maybe you wouldn’t let your daughter wear a corset or dye her hair. That’s fine. That’s parenting. But it’s not parenting to drag someone else’s child on the internet under the guise of “concern.” That’s projection. And when the child in question is a Black girl, that projection becomes part of a long, damaging history where girlhood is always on trial.
The real question isn’t whether North’s corset was “appropriate.” The question is why the adults watching feel entitled to debate it in the first place.
Because if we really care about protecting Black girls, maybe the first step is as simple as this: let them be girls.
