Cristal Valdes is a TikTok influencer (she posts under the handle @cristalallure) who has more than 1.1 million followers who enjoy checking out her life with husband Nick (who is also an influencer with more than 3 million followers) and their two adorable kids. They are one of those families who use almost every part of their daily lives — including their kids — to generate content and to land more sponsorships and endorsement deals. Almost every video features the kids, including content about her son's deafness as a recurring theme.
Although a lot of their content is pretty tame with lots of GRWM (get ready with me) posts and videos of family dance parties, one video has raised some questions about when influencer families should draw the line with sharing personal content, especially medical subjects and emotionally vulnerable moments. The video in question, which shows the moment when Cristal gets in the car to go home following her tubal ligation surgery, is only 30 seconds, but it shows how emotionally fraught and complicated it can be to decide to close the door to future children. It feels very, very honest, but does it belong on TikTok?
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Choosing the right family size is a very personal decision.
One of the biggest life choices we can make is deciding whether to have kids and then, if we decide to add children, how many to have. There are so many factors in that decision: financial, physical, emotional, age, and more. Deciding to permanently close the door on having additional kids is a determination many parents don't make lightly, and it is super normal to have mixed feelings about it.
(It's also normal to NOT have mixed feelings, so no shade to anyone who was doing the happy dance in the waiting room of the vasectomy clinic!)
Last summer, influencer Cristal posted a video of herself shortly after her tubal ligation procedure that made it clear that the procedure had taken both a physical and an emotional toll.
Cristal is seen crying as she gets into the car.
Moving slowly and in apparent pain in the video, Cristal gets into the passenger seat of the car while her husband starts to question her by saying "How are you doing?" and then "Why are you crying?"
Cristal replies that she is "tired" and notes in the caption that "after my second pregnancy, I had decided to no longer have kids…for personal and medical reasons this was the best decision for me…regardless of everything, it was still an emotionally & difficult moment to process."
That makes total sense as it was a big decision. The emotional aftermath was also a feeling that made sense to a lot of her followers. She got more than 4 million likes on the video and more than 14,000 comments, including from people who noted "That finality is so hard" and that it "truly hits differently after all is said and done."
There's no doubt some people felt really seen by and related to the video, which shows how complicated family planning decisions can be.
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Cristal's husband also posted video content of the aftermath of the surgery.
In Nick's video, a clearly tired and still recovering from anesthesia Cristal is shown asking for some ice cream with peanut butter while he explains that she's not allowed to have anything "thick" following the surgery. He goes and gets her a different kind of ice cream and feeds it to her while trying to convince her that it has peanut butter.
The whole thing is clearly meant to seem cute (and clearly most of their fans thought it was) but it's hard to watch and not wonder why such a vulnerable moment had to be made into content.
"Poor thing looks like she's about to cry. I feel bad for her," noted one user.
Another person agreed, writing, "people don't have private moments anymore, nothing is authentic."
There were even some who came to the comments sections of both videos to wonder why Nick didn't get a vasectomy (which is generally considered an easier procedure) and to critique the way he cared for his wife.
Is everything content for influencer families?
For such families, content is key. Families like this one post A LOT, and so it seems likely they are probably always thinking about what parts of their lives can be made into content to keep their fans happy and engaged.
But when your life is also your business, does everything have to become a video?
It's hard to say where we land on this. One the one hand, women sharing the truth about their experiences with motherhood (which also includes deciding to not have more kids) is a good thing and can help normalize the mixed emotions we can feel about reproductive choices. On the other hand, watching someone in a vulnerable moment can feel invasive and it led to both their reproductive choice and his caretaking to be critiqued online, which feels uncomfortable too.
The weirdest thing in this day and age of influencer families is that at least we can be grateful this wasn't sponsored content!
