Jaime King Speaks Out Against Body Shaming & Internet Bullies

Model and actress Jaime King shows off her beautiful pregnant belly with her baby’s future godmother Taylor Swift. Photo: @Jaime_King

Pregnant actress Jaime King is done with people body shaming and bullying women on social media, and she’s fighting for a change. She wants people to think about their online behavior. Do you tweet a snarky comment when a celebrity’s body isn’t up to Hollywood standards? Don’t. Are you the weight police, judging a pregnant woman for being too fat or too thin? Stop. King says it’s time to end the judgments. “Nobody should be body shamed,” King told ELLE. “Nobody should be torn apart for being too thin or too fat, or too this or too that.”

King recounts the exact moment she noticed how cruel the social mediasphere had gotten—it two years ago, when a very pregnant Kim Kardashian attended the Met Gala. “I remember going back in my hotel room and crying for like five hours because I kept seeing all these things come up online, all of these horrible pictures and GIFs,” King told ELLE. “Here was this beautiful glowing pregnant woman who is probably so excited to be attending the Met ball for the first time with the man that she loved. She had this beautiful dress made for her that was very daring and very gorgeous, and she has a beautiful growing child inside of her, and yet everybody bashed her and called her a whale or said she looked like a couch or drapes.”

King was upset at how quickly and easily people body shamed Kardashian. “It was so stunning to me that people thought that was OK—not only OK, but they condoned it. They would retweet it…. They would not even think about the way it would affect her mental health and the child’s health.” Pregnant for the first time during the episode, King was deeply affected. “Nobody’s standing up to say, ‘This is wrong. This isn’t right,’” she explains.

Jaime King posted this pregnant selfie to empower herself and other women. “This is who I am. And I love me in every flaw and curve or flat or thin area.” Photo: @Jaime_King

While King has been tempted to leave social media altogether, she decided instead to post something more empowering. “What I’m going to do is stand up and be brave even though it’s terribly vulnerable,” says King. Her move? The 35-year-old recently posted an unretouched picture of herself pregnant, wearing only her underwear. The caption read, “My body. My growing baby, open for comments. Plain as day. I, like every other woman, bracing for your judgments. This is who I am. And I love me in every flaw and curve or flat or thin area. And I love you as well in every form that your body takes.”

King, who has been famous since the age of 14 as a model and actress, explained that the semi-nude selfie wasn’t about looking good, it was about being real and free from judgment. “It’s not fun posting a picture of yourself essentially nude because if you look at my Instagram, I don’t do that. I don’t post like sexy selfies, that’s not what I’m known for. To me, what is sexy is just being authentic.” She had a friend take her picture from the front and back, despite a stomach bruise from amniocentesis and a recent avoidance of exercise because of her pregnancy. Despite the industry’s obsession with perfection, she didn’t alter the picture, she just put it up. “As I become more and more of a woman and [think about] what I really put out there in the world, I don’t want to put out perfection anymore because that’s not attainable. That’s not the truth.”

King, who has posted other pictures of her bump, like the one with close friend and future godmother Taylor Swift, was happy to spread her message of positivity. “I wanted to really empower other woman in knowing that hey, yeah, you know what? I am very thin but I’m pregnant and I feel beautiful and I feel grateful that I have a child growing inside of me, and I love every little piece of me because if I don’t love myself, who’s going to love myself?”