Kylie Jenner (left) was just 9 years old when she found fame on her family’s E! reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
From this point, the world watched her grow up into a business mogul and billionaire, with perfectly curated insights into her aspirational life offered through later seasons of the show, as well as on her social media pages.
With 320 million followers, Kylie is the most-followed female Instagram user in the world, and she mostly uses her page to promote her various products and share glam photos of herself.
When she became a mom to her daughter, Stormi, in 2018, Kylie wasted no time in returning to social media with her typically polished content.
She appeared to effortlessly breeze through life as a new mom, and her physical postpartum recovery was apparently just as easy, with the star showing off her toned physique in swimwear and tight-fitting clothes within two months of giving birth, alongside photos of her happy newborn.
In fact, Kylie has seemingly been so keen to depict her life and body as nothing less than perfect that she has even been exposed for photoshopping her images in the past.
In 2020, Kylie went so far as to delete a photo of herself posing in a swimming pool while wearing a bikini after fans noticed that the side of the pool was unnaturally curved, which suggested photoshop.
Kylie and her boyfriend, Travis Scott, welcomed their second baby together last month, with Kylie giving birth to their son on Feb. 2, 2022.
Although she originally said that they’d named their bundle of joy Wolf, on Monday she revealed on Instagram that they had changed his name — but did not share the new moniker.
But just seven weeks after giving birth, Kylie already appears to be taking a different approach to her representation of new motherhood this time around, and her gradual return to the spotlight has been praised by her followers for the refreshingly honest insight into postpartum recovery.
After keeping an incredibly low profile on social media in recent months, Kylie's latest posts, in which she's gotten incredibly real about life after having a baby, have come as a breath of fresh air.
Last week, Kylie surprised her fans when she shared a clip of herself walking on a treadmill while speaking candidly about how she is coping since welcoming her son.
The star was uncharacteristically open as she admitted that she was finding things “harder” this time around, and that she is struggling both “mentally and physically.”
“This experience for me personally has been a little harder than with my daughter,” she said at the time. “It's not easy mentally, physically, spiritually, it's just crazy.”
Kylie poignantly added: “I didn't just want to get back to life without saying that because I think we can look on the internet — for other moms going through it right now — we can go on the internet, and it might look a lot easier for other people, and put the pressure on us, but it hasn't been easy for me either.”
“It’s been hard,” she continued, before telling her following, “It’s OK not to be OK.”
“Once I realized that I was putting some pressure on myself... And I just keep reminding myself I made a whole human, a beautiful healthy boy,” Kylie said, adding: “We have to stop putting pressure on ourselves to be ‘back.’ Not even physically, just mentally, after birth. So yeah, just sending some love. I love you guys!”
And on Monday, Kylie shared previously unseen footage from her pregnancy and birth in a 10-minute-long video documentary dedicated to her son.
On Instagram, she posted a clip of the video alongside a selection of unseen photos — including one of her newborn’s feet pressed against her bare belly.
The image struck a chord with Kylie’s followers, with the raw look at her postpartum body standing out amid the glossy and heavily filtered images that she usually shares to her account.
Other moms were among the people to praise Kylie for sharing this moment, with one writing on a Reddit forum: “As a mommy, I love the rawness of this picture. The stretched skin, the postpartum tummy, the little extra weight. I just love it.”
Another said that this was exactly how women in the spotlight should utilize their influence, writing: “For women who have such big platforms, this is the type of content we need from them! I love this so much!”
“I love that she posted this. Normalizing normal bodies,” one person wrote. Another user agreed: “She didn’t have to share these moments and the fact that she chose to is so generous. I hope people are kind to her too. Postpartum is hard.”
“That first picture... That's exactly how my belly looked like one or two months after birth. The fact she posted that is refreshing. I love her for this picture,” a fellow mom commented. “I never thought my belly would look like Kylie Jenner’s,” someone else said.
Others highlighted the difference in Kylie as they acknowledged that she’d admitted to being “insecure” about her postpartum body after she gave birth to Stormi.
“Okay this is a big step for Kylie too because we knowwww how insecure this girl has been about her body-especially post partum,” one Reddit user wrote. Another echoed: “It’s ridiculous, but I’m proud of her, she has come a long way and I hope this is the beginning of a more natural and confident journey for her.”
During a 2018 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Kylie was vocal about how uncomfortable she was shooting for Calvin Klein with her sisters just weeks after giving birth.
Despite reassurances from her family that her body looked great, Kylie responded with: “It just doesn’t.” She later admitted that she found the return to photo shoots after having a baby “hard and discouraging.”
Kylie’s sisters have previously rushed to lose weight after giving birth, with Kourtney Kardashian revealing that she collapsed following weeks of dieting and overexercising when she had her first child, Mason, in 2009.
Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian purposefully scheduled a major magazine shoot for less than six months after giving birth to her son, Saint, in 2015. She used the set date as motivation for her weight loss and stuck to a strict diet so that she was comfortable posing nude on the cover of GQ Magazine when the self-imposed deadline rolled around.
Keeping this in mind, the fact that Kylie is not just speaking about her postpartum struggles, but also sharing unfiltered photos of her postbirth body marks a huge shift in how the KarJenner family portray themselves online.
The raw realness of Kylie’s recent posts appear to mark a complete departure from her usual content, and will hopefully pave the way to a more open and honest representation of motherhood from celebrities.
In fact, one follower admitted that the way Kylie and other celebrities made being a new mom look so easy had impacted them when they struggled after giving birth. “I really appreciate her saying this because I feel like she’s always made it look easy (like a lot of moms do),” they wrote, “and I struggle[d] so fucking bad during postpartum.”
Someone else agreed: “Same. It’s so important to educate moms and future moms that life is not always the cute baby photos on Instagram with mom looking carefree and beautiful.”
Others are just thrilled by Kylie’s fresh approach to social media, saying that it is the “most real” that the billionaire has been in years. “Showing her vulnerability and relating to other moms … this seems like a huge step for her,” a fan mused.
Another said that it was a “nice change from her usual content” as they expressed their hope that Kylie will continue with the “realness” in the future — a sentiment that I am pretty sure everybody agrees with.
