Hey Internet, Stop Sharing Fake Photos of a ‘Pregnant’ Kylie Jenner

Kylie Jenner may have a billion-dollar makeup empire and a famous family, but she’s still a 20-year-old woman. That fact, however, has been ignored ever since news of her maybe-pregnancy hit. The speculation and rumors were harmless and absurd at first—there’s nothing wrong with indulging in celebrity gossip…at a distance, but it’s important to have a grain-of-salt mentality when doing it. The trouble starts when this fascination with celebrity culture escalates.

Which is exactly what’s happening now with all this Jenner-pregnancy chatter. Innocent happy-hour talk has become something more sinister—and rabid. People feel entitled to know whether or not Jenner is pregnant, which is ridiculous. Jenner doesn’t owe anyone an explanation about anything.

Things hit a fever pitch this week. First, it was revealed on Keeping Up With the Kardashians that an employee was caught red-handed trying to capture a photo of Jenner in her own home. That alone would be troubling, but then a photo surfaced online of a supposedly “pregnant” Jenner at a CVS. In the pic, which we won’t include here but you can surely find online, a woman with black hair and Jenner-like features is perusing a CVS aisle while wearing a baggy green sweater. Fans immediately took this to be Jenner—and a confirmation that she’s pregnant.

But they jumped to conclusions: TMZ is now reporting the photo isn’t of Kylie Jenner at all. Instead, it’s just a woman who looks a lot like her. So now a non-famous civilian is collateral damage in the fight to uncover Jenner’s baby bump. Her photo is splashed across the Internet for the sole purpose of feeding a gossip machine.

Consider this proof it’s time for the Internet to calm down. If Jenner is pregnant, she’ll talk about it on her own terms—and we’ll be there to cover it. In the meantime, though, let’s just take a deep breath and let Kylie live her life.

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