Frances Bean Cobain's Sexy Shoot Reminds Us, Once Again, That We Are Old

Photos from hedislimane.com unless otherwise indicated

Little Frances Bean, all grown up, tatted-up, and smoking cigarettes.

​There's a line from Knocked Up I think of often these days, when the doorman of a swanky nightclub tells big sister Debbie, "I can't let you in 'cause you're old as fuck... for this club, you know, not for the earth." I know I'm not old - you know, for the earth - but I have felt old as fuck on two separate occasions this year, and both involved Nirvana.

The first occurred on a Wednesday night in March, when my curiosity to see what kind of judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez made on American Idol outweighed my general dislike of the show. The remaining hopefuls were asked to choose a song from the year they were born, and the performances were all '80s fabulous and predictable until Casy Abrams, a little, bearded redhead with a crazy look in his eyes, hopped onstage with a guitar and began to sing those familiar words, "Load up on guns, bring your friends it's fun to lose and to pretend..."

And that's when it hit me. Children born the year Nirvana released "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are not only old enough to compete on American Idol, the are also capable of growing massively thick, wooly beards.

​And I experienced a similar sensation this week when I stumbled upon the Web site of French fashion designer Hedi Slimane and some white-hot, sexy shots of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's little girl, looking very grown-up, grunged out, and covered in ink.

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​Rock stars with beautiful progeny are nothing new, a phenomenon most likely due to the fact that they have a thing for models, you know, "really, really ridiculously good-looking people" that produce equally ridiculously good-looking children. But none, save maybe Stephen Tyler's daughter Liv or Lisa Marie Presley, have remained such a constant source of public fascination.

Perhaps it's her pedigree, nothing short of rock and roll royalty, the daughter of not one, but two hardcore musicians credited with altering the landscape of modern music. Many Nirvana fans in their 30s and 40s, myself included, remember the day she was born, and later, the wide-eyed, cherub-faced toddler being toted around to premieres and events.

And the kid got a pretty raw deal right from the get go. She was jjust 20 months old when Kurt committed suicide, left to be raised by a mother with well-documented struggles with drug abuse and other forms of addiction.