Race row turns Australian cute baby search ugly

Melbourne: A fun search for the ultimate cute baby in Australia turned nasty after some mothers, furious over a voting glitch, began making cruel and racist attacks on other people's children.

The taunts transformed the Bonds Baby Search - all chubby cheeks and cuteness overloaded - into sheer ugliness, as some agitated mothers took to the company's Facebook site, Perth Now quoted The Daily Telegraph as saying.

Bonds, Wednesday, posted a warning on its Facebook page that any bullying comments and negative remarks about children would be removed, adding that it was supposed to be a fun event.

However, one mum has sent some of the comments to police.

Pippa Taylor was floored when someone posted a comment on a picture of her Eurasian daughter Lilli, saying "Bonds Australia not Asia".

"It's almost like an American beauty pageant where the women get their claws out," Taylor said.

Taylor, a Brisbane resident, said she was stunned at the racial comments made about her two-year-old daughter.

"I just think it's atrocious. It is meant to be just some fun and for a whole heap of mums, and fathers as well, to put their babies up because they think their babies are gorgeous.

"They are. All babies are gorgeous," she said.

Another mum complained on the Bonds Bumps & Baby Facebook page that someone had commented on a picture of her daughter, saying: "A child only a mother could love". Another baby was called an "ugly duckling".

It all started when voting for the People's Choice component of competition began Monday and parents used social networking sites to direct friends and family to vote for their baby, leaving the website unable to cope.

The number of entries sky-rocketed from 17,000 last year to 52,000 this year.

Organisers admitted the website was only made to manage with about 34,000 entries.

When the website went into meltdown it allowed people to vote for some babies but not others, leading to angry comments on the Bonds Facebook page.

The competition is being held since 2006, but this is the first People's Choice component.

Of the shortlisted finalists, 10 babies will feature in a Bonds marketing campaign.