In the photo which scored Axelle her contract she doned red, yellow and black face paint and a horned hat when she was spotted at the match in Brazil. After her face was beamed around the world and picked up on social media sites.
The pictures of happy Axelle quickly went viral after Belgium defeated Russia and her pictures appeared in newspapers across the world, which caught the attention of the cosmetic giant and helped in launching her new career. She recently announced her decision to accept a contract modeling for L'Oreal and even posted a video of her trying out their hair products. After returning home to Belgium, Axelle set up a professional Facebook page which now has over 200,000 'likes'.
But some French language outlets, citing comments by L'Oreal, reported that while Despiegelaere had done a few photo shoots for the beauty company, she did not have a contract.
She can already be seen in a L'Oreal YouTube ad Perhaps that makes her a bigger success than her national team
But her public success may be short lived as now a photo has emerged of the teenager posing with a rifle and a dead animal in Africa.
'Hunting is not a matter of life or death. It's much more important than that,' she said on her Facebook page L'Oreal has not responded to the revelations, but it has issued a statement in which it has said that it is keen to promote it's image of animal welfare - in 2012 the company donated $1.2million to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help improve the testing of safe chemicals.
