When a New Zealand mother posted a photo of her bare, post-baby stomach in a Facebook forum, she was confronted by trolls who mocked her physique.
The post received a barrage of shocking comments from male members shaming the woman for her stretch marks and excess skin.
One user snidely remarked ‘bio oil and walks with the pram won’t fix that’.
The post in a New Zealand Facebook forum received a barrage of shocking comments from male members shaming the woman for her stretch marks and excess skin
While some users slammed the woman’s stomach for being ‘stretch marked’, a host of accounts hit back with supportive comments claiming the men were ‘morons’ and calling for them to educate themselves.
‘Of course these insults come from men who can’t even carry a child…all women are different and carry their pregnancy differently, stretch marks can happen to the smallest of women,’ a member of the group wrote.
One comment which received seventeen ‘likes’ wrote that there is ‘nothing wrong with stretch marks’.
‘Any dude who puts a women [sic] down for hr stretch marks or sees them as ugly, doesn’t deserve the company of a women [sic] and shouldn’t really call himself a man.’
A stream of supportive comments flooded in, with one user branding a cruel and childish body shamer ‘a moron’
Seventeen people indicated their endorsement of this particular comment, which declared real men would never shame a woman for her stretch marks or post-baby body
One man voiced his solidarity by saying ‘a woman who bears the scars of child birth is a beautiful thing indeed’.
Another gentleman echoed this sentiment, kindly reassuring the mother.
‘You earned them [sic] marks, a badge of honour…you tell it like it is keep on going forward, all the best to you,’ he said.
Solidarity on social: An army of defiant group members jumped to the mother’s defence
Yet another woman declared her love for the post, explaining how it had taken her a long time to accept her own body.
‘Love love love!!!’ she wrote.
‘Took me along [sic] time to accept my body. I flaunt [it] now, scars, stretchmarks, cellulite and lose [sic] skin.’