One of the problems with the digital age is that sometimes it’s hard to determine when someone is using sarcasm or joking. And then there are the people who are intentionally pushing buttons and making controversial posts to get engagement and get people talking. It’s an effective strategy.
But sometimes, that chatter can get intense, judgmental, and even mean-spirited. That’s what one mother found recently on TikTok. Let's be honest, if a mom even hints at anything mildly controversial, the mom-shamers love to come out in full force.
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'Everyone is telling me to stop self-tanning my baby,' Kylen Suttner wrote on TikTok.
Kylen, 21, gave birth to a son, Suede, in December 2022. Like many people her age, Kylen is active on TikTok. There, she posted a video of herself holding her infant son toward the camera. The text over the video reads, “When everyone is telling me to stop self-tanning my baby but the loving tan employees have families to feed.”
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Kylen was just joking.
Later, Kylen told the New York Post, that the video was a joke, but people on the internet didn’t get it. Many vehemently expressed their displeasure in the video's comments section.
One user wrote: “Disgusting! So horrible!”
Someone else flat out said they didn’t know if this was a joke or not.
Kylen said her son was born with jaundice.
She says she does not tan her child. “He had jaundice and looked really tan when he was born,” she said in an email to New York Post. “Everyone commented on his color, so I decided to make a joke about it. I would never actually use self tanner on my baby.”
Kylen said most people got the joke.
“I feel like most people understood it was a joke,” she noted. “But the few who didn’t were appalled that I would self-tan my baby.”
We’re glad to hear this. While not applying self-tanner to newborn skin might seem like a no-brainer, we’ve certainly heard about parents doing far worse. Thankfully, Kylen is not one of those parents.
