Arie Luyendyk Jr. couldn’t help boasting about his wife, Lauren Burnham, and her postpartum figure on Instagram on July 25, thus sending the internet into a tizzy.
While many responded with compliments on Burnham’s body — she’s wearing a bright, booty-baring thong bikini in the pic in question — others were irritated by the gesture and felt that Luyendyk’s objectification of his wife was completely unnecessary.
The couple welcomed their daughter, Alessi, eight weeks ago. The photo shows Burnham snuggling the baby to her cheek (but it wasn’t that cheek the internet was focused on).
Luyendyk Jr. captioned the shot, “Proud of you @laurenluyendyk, hottest momma around… #8weeks.”
He’s proud of her… for being the hottest momma around. Not because she squeezed Alessi out of a space smaller than a sesame bagel, but because of her booty-popping, hot-momma, social-media swagger. Sigh.
Unfortunately, he also commented in the comment thread, “Annnnd she may kill me for posting this,” which seems to indicate he didn’t obtain her consent before sharing the photo with, oh, the entire world. Yuck.
Some followers were not happy, which isn’t new for the Luyendyks.
“That’s not love… that should be for you and not the world,” wrote one.
“This seems insane to post! Way to publicly sexually objectify your child’s mother? Lauren looks great, I’m not shaming her, but this post feels sleazy. Super disappointing!” said another.
Note: “I’m not shaming her, but” is usually a good sign that there’s definitely some shaming going on here. Which pretty much proves the fact that the best way to talk about a postpartum body… is not to talk about a postpartum body. Remember Amanda Seyfried challenging Insta-influencer Arielle Charnas and calling out the fact that privilege factored into Charnas’ postpartum shape?
Are there ever any winners here?
Other comments on the Luyendyk post included:
“Completely unacceptable picture” and “She looks great but I don’t know if I’d want a bunch of pervs staring at my wife’s butt.”
How about this pic of the whole fam? Surely this one’s okay, right? NOPE.
Commenters got all up in the Luyendyks’ grill for, well — here’s a sample of the sanctimommy responses (from which Arie’s defended his wife before):
“Insane! Exposing a infant to potentially get bitten by a infested mosquito or God knows what, can’t you find a babysitter or put your own desires in the back burner until she is a few months older? Selfishness!”
Well, we can’t say we agree with the mosquito fearmongering here…but maybe next time you post, you can applaud your wife’s intellect instead, Arie?
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