Catelynn Lowell has had a rough few months, and most Teen Mom fans seem to be very understanding of that.
After it was revealed that she’d been suffering from suicidal thoughts after having a miscarriage last fall, followers of the show were ready to give her all the support they could.
Every time she’s made a statement on social media about her situation, she’s received so much love and admiration.
And earlier this week, when she revealed that she’d been diagnosed with panic disorder, depression, and PTSD from her traumatic childhood, people were more than willing to applaud her strength.
Which makes sense — she’s been through so much, and it’s great that she’s been taking care of herself and getting the help she needs.
But now that she’s been out of her last stint in rehab for a few weeks, things are starting to get back to normal.
And for the Teen Mom crew, that means sharing photos of her kids that could be considered inappropriate and getting bashed for it by dozens and dozens of strangers.
Catelynn shared this photo of her three-year-old daughter Nova yesterday, and in the caption, she explained that they were painting Easter eggs.
But many people got upset because … well, you know why they got upset.
“Omg put a shirt on her!!” one of her followers wrote. “Poor little girl! Can’t teach a careless parent sense smh.”
“Jeez, would it kill ya to put an old shirt on the child?” another asked. “There’s a little boy in the background, it’s ok to teach children modesty!”
One person said that Nova going without a shirt was “ok for the house but on the gram like that? Just saying it looks a little weird.”
“And those hearts, kinda tacky for a little girl, kinda looking too adultish for her,” that same person added, sharing the sentiments of many of Cate’s followers.
As another person explained it, “The reality of the situation is that you don’t know what creeps are out there looking the wrong way. Although you may not be, pedophiles and such do exist in every scenario.”
Someone called it “disgusting” for Catelynn to allow Nova to hang out like this, and another said it was “in bad taste whether it’s a girl or boy because most of us are nice but not everyone is and this is a public platform.”
Essentially, Catelynn’s comment section was divided between people who thought it was seriously inappropriate for Nova to be running around without a shirt on and people who thought it was perfectly normal.
Surprisingly not many people recognized that there was a third option: let your toddler do messy activities without clothes and then don’t share a photo of it to three million strangers on the internet.
As a fun little bonus, there was another entirely separate issue that others took with this photo — see that little aquarium in the back?
Lots of Cate’s followers told her that there wasn’t enough water in it and it needed to be cleaned, and that she was a bad pet owner for allowing her tank to get to that state.
Social media, right?
Catelynn responded briefly to both camps of outraged citizens — to the pet brigade, she explained that it’s not a tank for fish, but a tank for turtles, which is apparently a totally different setup.
And to the others, she simply wrote “she’s painting leave the kid alone.”
But, you know, it’s the internet, so that’s not going to happen.
