Spice Girl Melanie C stuns fans with near-nude Instagram photo

USUALLY private former Spice Girl Melanie C has stunned fans by posting a near-nude picture to her official Instagram account.

But some of her followers were quick to accuse the artist known to many as Sporty Spice of hypocrisy, with the post coming mere weeks after she’d criticised the current crop of pop stars for getting their clothes off.

“Cheeky little cover shoot tomorrow. Better get my work pants ready!” the singer captioned the candid pic, which shows her facing the camera in nothing but a pair of flesh-coloured underpants, hands covering her breasts and a surprised look on her face. She added the hashtag #putsomeclothesonwoman for good measure.

Melanie C declined the opportunity to rejoin with the Spice Girls to celebrate their 20th anniversary this year, instead releasing her seventh solo album Version Of Me. She made headlines at the time of the album’s release thanks to controversial comments about UK girl band Little Mix.

While she said that she loved the band — describing them as the “closest thing to the Spice Girls we’ve seen” — she said their increasingly racy image meant she was reluctant to let seven-year-old daughter Scarlet watch their videos.

“[Scarlet] is a massive Little Mix fan but I’ve started to be more sparing in what I show her. I don’t let her watch videos by artists that aren’t appropriate for her. That makes me a bit sad,” she said of the band.

“All young women want to look sexy and hot so I understand it’s hard. But I think it’s such a shame. We live in a narcissistic age — it’s 100 per cent worse than when I was in the Spice Girls.

“It was a more innocent time, although we were criticised for wearing crop tops.”

Given the raunchy nature of the former Spice Girl’s latest Instagram pic, followers were quick to point out what they saw as hypocrisy: “Too sexy for my daughter to see,” one Instagram user quipped under the photo, while another asked, “Didn’t you just criticise Little Mix for dressing ‘provocatively’? A bit hypocritical don’t ya think?!!”

Another pointed out that Mel had vowed in another recent interview that she would never publicly disrobe.

“Didn’t you say in an interview on The Pool a few weeks back that you don’t know why women get their kit off in the name of ‘girl power’ and you couldn’t get your ‘bits and bobs out in public’ as you wouldn’t find it ‘empowering’. Hypocritical much?” one person commented.

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