Kim Kardashian on Friday called out those who bully and body-shame others, recalling her embarrassment when she was attacked for gaining 60 pounds during her first pregnancy.
In an Instagram story posting, Kardashian detailed how she had been compared to a killer whale during the later stages of her pregnancy in 2013, and how her figure was contrasted unfavorably to Prince William’s wife Kate, who was also pregnant at the time.
“I cried every single day over what was happening to my body, mainly from the pressures of being constantly compared to what society considered a healthy person should look like – as well as being compared to Shamu the Whale by the media,” she wrote, referring to the mammal that used to perform at SeaWorld.
“I was shamed on a weekly basis with cover stories that made my insecurities so painful I couldn’t leave the house for months after. It really broke me,” said Kardashian, who rose to fame through her family’s reality TV show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”.
The cosmetics businesswoman and social media star said she was reminded of those months while watching a recent documentary about Britney Spears, tracing the meteoric rise of the pop star and the media coverage of her mental health breakdown in 2007.
Kardashian (40) said the documentary made her empathize with Spears. She said the media “can be very traumatizing and it can really break even the strongest person”.
“No-one deserves to be treated with such cruelty or judgment for entertainment,” Kardashian told her 208 million Instagram followers.
Kardashian gave birth to her daughter North in June 2013. She went on to have a son, Saint, in 2015 and later had two children by a surrogate because of health complications. Kardashian last month filed for divorce from the rapper Kanye West, her husband of almost seven years.
Britney Spears legal case draws new scrutiny after TV documentary
The Britney Spears legal case was back in court in February with little progress on the increasingly controversial issue of how much longer the pop star will have her personal and business affairs controlled by other people.
Los Angeles Superior Court judge Brenda Penny said the singer’s father and a newly-appointed financial trust company must work together to develop an investment plan that will benefit Spears.
Spears has made clear in the past year that she no longer wants her father Jamie involved in her affairs, but the judge in December extended his conservatorship until September 2021.
Jamie Spears was appointed conservator in 2008 after the singer was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment.
Thursday’s hearing, which Spears did not attend in person, followed the broadcast of a television documentary last week that brought new scrutiny to the case and to the widely-publicized breakdown of the former teen phenomenon.
On social media, fans and celebrities have been expressing support for Spears, now 39, with the hashtags #We’reSorryBritney and #FreeBritney.
Glamour magazine on Monday issued an apology, saying: “We are all to blame for what happened to Britney Spears – we may not have caused her downfall, but we funded it.”
Spears later revived her career but she pulled out of a Las Vegas concert residency in 2019 and briefly entered a mental health facility.
