The Internet has been ablaze over images of 9-year-old Kristina Pimenova, who started her modeling career at the age of three and has been dubbed by Women Daily magazine as the most beautiful girl in the world.

The Moscow-born model, who has contracts with Armani, Benetton, Fendi and Roberto Cavalli’s children’s lines, has become the center of a social media debate about the sexualization of children and the online exploitation of minors.

Her mother Glikeriya Pimenova, a former model who runs her daughter’s social media sites, believes that any exploitation on Facebook or Instagram is in the eye of the beholder.

“You must think like a paedophile in order to see something sexual in these pictures, so it is time for you to see a doctor,” she explained to The Daily Mail. “I am certain in my mind all her photographs are absolutely innocent. I have never asked her to take this or that pose, and in fact I must say she does not especially like it when I am photographing her, so I do it quickly and when she doesn't notice.”

Kristina Pimenova's Instagram page currently has 315,000 followers. Some of the posted comments have mentioned the child's "long legs" and or refferred to her as a "babe."

Pimenova feels that the problem is a small one, tied to only a minority of visitors of her daughter's sites who come to the images with their own prejudices and hang-ups. She adds that this is a particularly Western problem fueled by the Western media and more.

“The flow of such comments is coming from countries where same-sex marriages are allowed,” she said.

Pimenova is, in fact, confused that displays of homosexuality in front of children are tolerated in Europe and America, while pictures of her daughter cause such controversy.

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