Why I’m Dreading Kim Kardashian’s Second Pregnancy

Kim Kardashian pregnant with North West. Photo: Getty Images

If you live in a place where there’s a computer or smartphone within 10 miles of you, you’ve heard the news: Kim Kardashian is pregnant with her second child. I’m dreading the next six months. Not because of the endless, breathless coverage of everything she does and wears—that’s fine, I might even kind of like it. I am, however, dreading the inevitably nasty comments that will emerge about her body as it changes.

And it sounds like Kim is too:

Can’t wait til my website is active! I’m gonna do live video streaming so every time someone talks shit I can go blast the fuck outta them

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 2, 2015

To be clear, I don’t usually care about Kim Kardashian. I neither love nor hate her; I don’t know her as a person. I’m a member of the media who is paid to, ahem, keep up with what’s going on in her world, or at least the world she chooses to show everyone. (True story: I once took several hours out of my life to find out what kind of oil was on her butt on that famous internet-breaking Paper magazine cover.) But as a fellow woman who has been pregnant twice, I find myself in the position of wanting to defend her preemptively.

The tabloid media and the internet peanut gallery were incredibly cruel to Kim during her first pregnancy. There were the 2013 Met Gala couch memes after she wore that long-sleeved floral Givenchy gown. Then of course there was the orca moment after she wore a black and white dress toward the end of her pregnancy. Not to mention the endless unflattering covers with headlines like “I Can’t Stop Eating!”

And it’s already starting again. A quick scroll through comment sections yesterday revealed the following gems from some of our fellow human beings:

? “Great…we get to watch her #$%$ and her stomach grow to mega proportions once again.”

? “Nine months of swollen ankles & feet bulging out of $1300 heels photos and fat-gargoyle-getting-fatter squeezed into hideous evening dress photos to look forward to.”

? “This woman’s class and style is tasteless, horrible and she looked like a sow.”

Dr. Vivian Diller, an ex-model and psychologist who treats many models, isn’t surprised that it’s happening a second time. “People tend to use celebs to project their own fears about their changing bodies,” she says. “People are also critical of celebs when their bodies don’t appear perfect because it humanizes them, makes them more real, more like the average person. It’s as if the ‘photo-shop gig’ is up when they’re pregnant and they’re caught being like everyone else.”

People generally defend these types of comments with the justification that Kim puts herself out there and wants to be famous, so she should have to deal with the public backlash and scrutiny. I agree with this when it involves a celebrity’s actions, like Justin Bieber throwing the n-word around or Alec Baldwin harassing flight attendants. But when it comes to gaining weight during a pregnancy? It’s not OK. It’s basically the equivalent of a man saying he’s justified in cat-calling or grabbing a woman’s ass because she’s wearing a miniskirt and heels, and therefore is asking for it. Kim is not asking to be fat shamed with her tight-fitting Givenchy dress. She’s just trying to maintain a modicum of her personal style—whether that style is to your taste or not—and identity during a time that can be physically and emotionally tumultuous, to say the least.

Maternity dressing is frustrating. During my first pregnancy, I was a nurse practitioner and had the option to trade in my regular clothes for hospital scrubs, which are huge and roomy. Eventually I could no longer even tie my men’s size large pants. I was a size 6 pre-pregnancy and gained 50 pounds. When even loose, shapeless pants with a drawstring don’t fit you, you know it’s dire. I was really close to resorting to just wearing those sack-like hospital gowns with granny panties. If Riccardo Tisci offered to come and custom tailor my scrubs, I would have screamed, “Yes!” On one notable occasion, I was wearing leggings and a big shirt and heard a man behind me say something about my “cottage cheese ass.” I went home and bawled, so I can only imagine how Kim felt being compared to a killer whale for the amusement of the internet.

Clothes can make or break your mood at the best of times; I’d argue they are critical when you’re pregnant and your body is changing on a daily basis. So if Kim feels good wearing skintight French designers, more power to her. The relentless public fat shaming of celebrities—which is doubly disgusting when they are pregnant—is an extension of what’s become the toxic sport of red carpet arm chair criticism, which is often less about the stylishness of a frock and more about how the public feels about the celebrity.

In the end, a lot of the nastiness is basic schadenfreude. Kim Kardashian is wealthy beyond comprehension and lives a jet-setting life that few people can imagine (and that many don’t think she deserves). People are going to look for vulnerability and exploit that. It’s classic bullying: Bully feels insecure, picks on someone who has some visible cellulite while six months pregnant and wearing Balmain. “It’s unfortunate that [the message] comes across through criticism during pregnancy—a message that is unfair to all women who undergo change at that time,” Dr. Diller says.

Kim told Elle.com last summer, “I recommend hiding for a good year and having no pregnancy style…If you can do it, hide. Never leave the house.” Please don’t hide Kim. But maybe skip the comments section.