Tori Spelling admits that her April Fools pregnancy joke was motivated by constantly being body shamed.
The 47-year-old actress received criticism on Thursday after posting a photo of herself cradling her belly and captioning the pic, “No. 6.” In a followup post the next day, she explained how she didn’t mean to offend anyone, but “unless you’re in the public eye” it’s hard “to understand what it feels like to be body shamed so publicly.”
“Every week, magazine and press outlets ask if I am pregnant. To set the record straight, I am not. The fact is, after my fifth baby, my body didn’t bounce back like it had before. That’s when the constant questions of ‘yet another’ pregnancy first began,” she began. “I feel like I have to constantly defend my body when instead, I should be honoring it for the miracle of life it gave me five times.”
She continued by writing that she knows “pregnancy is an extreme blessing” and “would never intentionally poke fun at losing a child or not being able to carry one. I myself have miscarried.”
“My post was simply to turn the tables for once on the press. They constantly create wild and often hurtful stories about me, my body, and my family,” she added. “For those of you that are hurt, I hear you. I love you. I welcome your stories and I will try my best to support you. Please accept this as a virtual hug to my entire community. T xoxo.”
Spelling’s post was applauded by many friends and followers who expressed their support for her.
The former Beverly Hills, 90210 star has previously opened up about how receiving hurtful comments about her looks affected her self image.
“When I started 90210 at 16 I was filled with low self confidence. Then, internet trolls (yep we had them back then too!) called me frog and bug eyed,” she recalled in an Instagram post in October. “Being put under a microscope as a young girl in her formative years was hard. I spent years begging makeup artists on my shows and movies to please try to make my eyes look smaller. I would cry over my looks in the makeup trailer chair.”
She also urged people to be kind online, telling them to “just remember next time that you go to comment on someone’s account regarding their face or body or choices, you don’t know them. They don’t know you. But, their soul will remember that unkind comment. It’ll be imprinted on them.”
