James Charles Faces Backlash For Pregnancy Photo Shoot With Prosthetic Bump

YouTuber James Charles is facing backlash after he used a prosthetic baby bump to do a pregnancy photoshoot and feign carrying a baby for a day. 

Global lockdowns and stay-at-home orders have prompted many of us to do things that are out of the ordinary, but while the rest of us have been playing games with toilet roll and trying to reach our step count in the living room, Charles has apparently been playing pregnant.

Taking to social media this week, Charles posted a picture of himself posing naked, with one hand cradling a baby bump. Alongside the image he wrote, ‘Surprise… new video out now.’

As it turned out, the image was promotion for his new video titled ’24 hours being pregnant’, in which he underwent a series of challenges and tasks to see if he was ‘strong enough to experience what it’s actually like being pregnant for 24 hours straight’.

As well as sparking a lot of confusion, Charles’ posts received backlash for his decision to feign pregnancy and for seemingly failing to appreciate that many people struggle throughout their lives to get pregnant.

Twitter users expressed their disapproval of the video, with one person responding, ‘I’m sorry but James Charles and his team really filmed that sh*t, made those comments and didn’t see anything wrong with it? How thirsty for clout can you be?! So gross, disrespectful and insensitive. Also I’m sure he’s at an age where he knows that pregnancy jokes aren’t ok.’

Another social media user commented, ‘im 34 weeks rn & don’t even fw you..not gonna upset myself & watch this train wreck either. just came to say i highly doubt you were able to even find a touch of how it feels to be pregnant. messy & deadass nobody asked for this [sic].’

Charles does not yet appear to have publicly responded to the backlash, though he appeared to anticipate these kinds of responses as he stressed in his video that the stunt was not done to ‘make fun of or make light of pregnancies and the sensitivities and the complications that come around it’.

After posting the video, Charles noted that ‘James Charles pregnant’ was trending on Twitter.

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