Have you heard the good news?!
Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra have jobs now! Real ones where they do stuff and everything!
It’s pretty notable, because in the past few years, we’ve pretty much just seen Catelynn and Tyler sitting on couches and being sad or apathetic about pretty much everything.
Not to trivialize their mental health struggles — Catelynn has anxiety, and she also suffered from postpartum depression.
But after they placed their first daughter for adoption all those years ago, they had big dreams of going to college and getting good jobs.
Tyler wanted to be a therapist or a social worker at one point, and Catelynn wanted to do something to help other girls who found themselves 16 and pregnant like she was.
However, they’ve seemed pretty stagnant for a while now — until this current season of Teen Mom OG, actually.
This season, we’ve seen Tyler get pretty passionate about the idea of starting a children’s clothing line, and Catelynn’s been helping him.
Tyler designs the clothes himself, and a local seamstress has been building the pieces.
The line is called Tierra Reign — the last part of their last name along with their daughter Nova’s middle name.
And though the clothes aren’t officially for sale yet, they’ve been promoting them on social media for a good few weeks now.
That’s where the problems start.
Yesterday, this photo was shared to Tierra Reign’s official Instagram account:
It was not very well-received.
“Nooooo!” one person commented on the photo. “Don’t do that to little girls clothing. Soooo inappropriate guys!”
Another wrote “I don’t think this top is very age appropriate. The cut, the color, the choker … it’s not something that I would put on a young child.”
Tyler posted the same photo on his personal account, and the comments were much worse — he was accused of sexualizing children with clothing and advertising like this.
He’s deleted the photo from his account, but it remains on the Tierra Reign page.
And honestly, we sort of see what people are upset about. It is a weird picture.
The little girl looks too young to be rocking a choker, and usually in ads like these, the kids are smiling or, you know, acting like children instead of just staring ahead at the camera.
But don’t worry — Tyler has already addressed the issue.
He shared another photo, this one of his precious little daughter, Nova, wearing the same shirt as the one in the ad.
In the caption, he explained that he usually doesn’t respond to criticism on social media, which is fair, because if he did, how would he ever be able to do anything else?
But, he said, he felt the need to respond to the backlash.
“Emma (the cute little model I used) was actually almost 2 sizes too small for the tank!” he wrote.
“We realized the day of the photo shoot & the production of her size was not completed yet, so we didn’t have one to swap it out (or we would have).”
That’s the reason the top looks to be a bit lower cut on the model than it does on Nova — they likely had to clip the shirt in the back to make it look right, which pulled it down in the front.
As for the choker scandal, he said that “We bought a whole bunch of accessories for the shoot & let the kids decide on what they wanted to wear.”
Little Emma apparently picked the choker. After all, chokers are very popular right now.
He said that in this new photo, Nova is modeling the shirt as it’s made to fit, and honestly, it does look pretty cute here.
Tyler acknowledged that “not everyone will like our style,” and “that’s totally okay!”
“But I wanted you guys to know that I am paying attention & appreciate all the feedback … good or bad, it helps the business grow in the right direction.”
Proud of you, Baltierras!