It's not our business how Abbey Clancy parents her daughter - and why isn't the dad ever criticised?

It’s been a good couple of weeks for WAG fans. Not only have we had the breathtaking Colleen Rooney versus Rebekah Vardy saga - dubbed ‘WAGatha Christie’ in honour of the former’s exceptional Instagram-aided detective skills - but now Abbey Clancy has stepped into the limelight with her new clothing collection for Lipsy, which she models alongside her adorable daughter Sophia, eight.

Yet Clancy has reportedly come under fire over Sophia’s modelling debut. Some parents apparently feel she is far too young for such frivolity and the finger of blame is being firmly pointed at her mum. Sophia’s arguably far more famous father, England football star Peter Crouch, is apparently entirely absent in this blame equation.

Clancy is adamant that she hasn’t pushed Sophia into modelling and the youngster told TV host Lorraine Kelly she wants to be a model when she grows up.

Why wouldn’t she? Before she was a WAG, Clancy herself was a MAW (model/actress/whatever), but I think her career choice can really be summed up as being PAA – Professionally Astonishingly Attractive – and it’s hard to argue that this choice has done her any harm at all.

One suspects that this is the real issue, and that Sophia’s age is merely a convenient excuse to have a pop at a mother who also happens to be a beautiful woman and profits from her gorgeousness. There is nothing our patriarchal society dislikes more than a woman – especially a mother - who won’t stay in the kitchen, is aware of her own attractiveness and worst of all, uses it for personal gain.

The boring predictability of criticising Clancy for a decision that makes financial and personal sense in a world that demands women comply to ruthless and rigorous beauty standards, while simultaneously shaming them for attempting to do so in a way that benefits them, is truly depressing.

Clancy with her footballer husband Peter Crouch - who has not come under fire Credit: David M. Benett

We’re so busy blaming the player that the game goes unchecked. Who is pointing the finger at the absurd beauty ideal to which we’re all expected to subscribe?

Perhaps Sophia is too young for an industry that can breed eating disorders, mental health issues and self-harm among girls and women. But given that charity Beat estimates there are 1.25 million people in the UK with an eating disorder, it’s clear one doesn’t need to be a model to fall victim to impossible standards. Beat also records eating disorders in girls as young as six, and women as old as 70.

Age is no protection; no woman or girl is too young or too old for the relentless, crushing pressure to look like – well, Abbey Clancy. Even Abbey Clancy doesn’t look like Abbey Clancy - she’s as vulnerable to the pressure as the rest of us who aren’t PAA, and last year was pictured wearing invisible braces, having previously admitted to feeling self-conscious about her smile.

Make no mistake, an eight-year-old putting on a pretty dress and smiling for photos with her mother is not the problem. What Abbey Clancy chooses for herself and her daughter is nobody’s business but hers – oh, and Peter Crouch, of course.

It’s an old, boring script and it needs to stop. Would ‘parents’ be happier if Sophia had professed a desire to do something more obviously worthwhile with her young life – fight climate change, perhaps? Because no young girl ever got lambasted by grown adults, including grown men in positions of power, for wanting to save the planet, did she?