Belgian Axelle Despiegelaere Just Watched The World Cup, But Went Home With A L’Oréal Modeling Contract . . . A Short-Lived One

Belgian Axelle Despiegelaere, a 17-year-old beauty who wore her Viking-inspired red and yellow hat and a face paint during the Belgium-Russia World Cup match on June 22, bagged a L'Oreal modeling contract.

She was just there as a fan, as a supporter of her country's football team, cheering for the Belgian kickers. But little did she know that she was being photographed and shown on TV during the game.

Belgian Axelle Despiegelaere's photos during the Russia-Belgium group battle with his red and yellow hat and pompoms circulated and created a buzz on the Internet,which sparked interest from the L'Oréal Professionnel team. That interest turned into a modelling contract.

Unfortunately, the luck of Belgian Axelle Despiegelaere's went another quick turn as a photo of her, carrying a rifle and posing next to an oryx gazelle in Africa gained negative social media attention.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, she wrote on her Facebook page, "Hunting is not a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that ... this was about 1 year ago ... ready to hunt americans today haha."

The Facebook page she has set up for herself, which gained 200,000 likes since it was made, has now been deleted. Although unofficial Facebook pages are still existing, commenters flood the page with bashing and hate comments, still connected to the hunting picture she posted earlier this July.

The L'Oréal Professionnel immediately released a statement, saying that Belgian Despiegelaere "is not one of the L'Oréal Professionnel spokespeople, and they only collaborated with her on an ad hoc basis to produce a video for social media use in Belgium."

A representative of the cosmetics company refused to answer if Belgian Axelle Despiegelaere's hunting photo has something to do with the short-lived modeling contract. L'Oréal Professionnel is known to have stopped testing cosmetics to animals and now serves as an advocate of animal welfare.