Hailey Bieber Isn’t Pregnant, Assholes

If you, a Very Famous Woman, ever find yourself in a heterosexual relationship with a Very Famous Man, chances are your romance will be plagued by two things: First, relentless comparisons to (and maybe even relentless harassment because of) your partner’s former paramours, and second, endless speculations about your potential pregnancy. Unluckily for Hailey Bieber, she’s been more than privy to both. This week, Bieber nipped whatever festering pregnancy rumors are out there in the bud, revealing to the public that she isn’t currently carrying the next Canadian American heartthrob, but instead, dealing with a painful ovarian cyst.

On Monday, Bieber snapped a pic of her standing profile on her Instagram story, with her sweatshirt pulled up to reveal her bare tummy, with the caption: “I have a cyst on my ovary the size of an apple. I don’t have endometriosis or PCOS but I have gotten an ovarian cyst a few times and it’s never fun.” She included a separate caption below her stomach that said, “not a baby.”

While it probably isn’t as irritating as having the public mercilessly probe at your body at every turn, the cyst does come with its own set of complications: “It’s painful and achey and makes me feel nauseous and bloated and crampy and emotional,” the 26-year-old model wrote. “Anyways… I’m sure a lot of you can overly relate and understand. We got this,” she concluded, followed by three peace sign emojis. I don’t often look to rich white women to feel represented, but today, Hailey Bieber really is just like me.

Bieber couldn’t have made herself any clearer about what her condition is and isn’t, and for good reason, too. Jennifer Aniston recently opened up about how painful the baby bump tabloids of the past decade were since, in private, she was actually dealing with fertility struggles. In her 2020 documentary Miss Americana, Taylor Swift talks about how continued scrutiny about her mid-region used to trigger bouts of her eating disorder. It’s a cruel and never-ending practice we’ve grown accustomed to—fueled by both our hyper fixation on policing people with uteruses’ bodies and believing that all they’re good for is childbearing.

Bieber isn’t new to the baby rumor mill, and has dodged similar speculations in the past: Earlier this year, people picked apart her Grammy’s outfit and suspected that she and Justin Bieber were expecting. When Radar Online posted their story about it on Instagram, she commented, “I’m not pregnant leave me alone.” This go around, Bieber seems to have squashed the embers of any gossip before they set fire.

If anything, I thank Bieber for raising awareness about ovarian cysts, which are as common as they are annoying. I’ll be over here, my own heating pad on my uterus, pouring one out for a cyster.