Late this past winter, Emily Ratajkowski welcomed her first child.
After sharing a photo in which she held her now 4-month-old baby at an awkward angle, she was brutally mom-shamed.
Now, Emily is clapping back and giving trolls a serious scolding.
She reminds us all that this is the same kind of treatment once given to Britney Spears. Has society learned nothing?
From the moment that Emily Ratajkowski revealed her pregnancy, we knew that people were going to be weird about it.
People are weird about women, about babies, about parenting, and especially about Emily.
It’s not fair or right, but the onslaught of sublimated horniness and outright mom-shaming was inevitable.
Recently, Emily shared a photo of her holding her four-and-a-half month old baby, Sylvester.
Posing for the photo in a bikini, she held her baby with one arm, as many parents and caretakers have done while needing one arm free.
The image ignited a firestorm in the comments, as if Emily had been dangling him over a gorilla enclosure.
First, Emily deactivated comments, but not before the barrage of mom-shaming had already been fired.
With bloggers, news outlets, and mom-shamers linking to the photo to call her out, she ended up deleting the whole post.
Even that did not stem the tide of buzz about how she held her baby — it only meant that she saw a little less of it. A little.
It is unfortunately no surprise that widely reviled reactionary figure Piers Morgan weighed in.
If there’s one thing that Piers Morgan does more than tell people how to hold their kids, it’s shame and attack women.
Getting to do both at once must have been a real thrill for this notorious buffoon.
“That’s not how you hold a baby @emrata,” the disgraced former Good Morning Britain host scolded.
“And,” he tweeted, “your millions of followers shouldn’t be encouraged to do the same.”
Seemingly unable to stop there, Piers sneered: “Happy to give you some tips if you need them.”
While we are truly nauseated to confirm that Piers does have children, it’s unclear how that makes him a special expert.
Emily is also a parent, just one with less firsthand experience.
And even that is in question, given Piers’ anachronistic views on gender roles and so much more.
But being loudly and maliciously wrong about things has defined Piers’ career for many years.
On almost any topic, he is simply going to be wrong in a way that is both cruel and foolish.
Unfortunately, he was far from alone.
Some felt that Emily was endangering Sylvester by standing in this pose.
Others simply felt that, even if Sylvester was fine, she was being a bad role model to her followers.
Additional comments across social media simply accused the photo of being awkward and not worth sharing.
In reality, different children can be held differently because their bodies are different.
(For example, as a newborn, I could be held upright without head support because I could already lift my head at birth)
It is difficult to see how Emily’s four-and-a-half month old baby is endangered by being held in one arm.
“We are all reflecting back on shaming Britney,” Emily wrote on her Instagram Stories.
“And,” she continued, “calling her a bad mom when she drove with her baby in her lap.”
Presumably, she means we as a society. I certainly never said anything of the sort about Britney Spears.
“We talk about how we have to ‘do better’ as a culture,” Emily continued.
“Meanwhile,” she observed, “my comments are filled with awful remarks about how I don’t deserve to be a mom.”
Her meaning is clear: society has not progressed as much as many seem to believe.
“Shame on you all,” Emily scolded her shamers.
“I don’t care if you hate me or hate celebrity (or just hate women),” she acknowledged.
“But,” Emily wrote, “it’s incredibly scary to become a parent and nobody deserves to be told by strangers that they’re a s–tty mother.”
