Kat Von D Comes Out as Anti-Vaccine, Which Is Really a Fucking Bummer
LatestIn a real drag bit of news for fans of top-shelf eyeliner and science, tattoo artist and makeup genius Kat Von D revealed that she’s against vaccines in an Instagram post Thursday night. Von D, who recently announced her pregnancy with new husband Leafar Seyer of the band Prayers, wrote about feeling judged for the choices she’s making as an expectant parent: planning a home birth, using a midwife, being vegan, and not vaccinating. In this order: Yes, sure, okay… Kat, what the hell?
Von D’s post begins, reasonably enough, “I knew the minute we announced our pregnancy that we would be bombarded with unsolicited advice.” She then lists all the things she feels that she and Seyer (a stage name; he’s also known by his birth name, Rafael Reyes) are being judged for:
“And, if you don’t know what it’s like to have the entire world openly criticize, judge, throw uninformed opinions, and curse you – try being an openly pregnant vegan on Instagram, having a natural, drug-free home birth in water with a midwife and doula, who has the intention of raising a vegan child, without vaccinations.”
This is what journalists like to call “burying the lede,” and it’s a bit of a mystery: While Von D has been a committed vegan and animal rights advocate for a long time, anti-vaccine sentiments don’t go hand-in-hand with those views. Nor is she, to our knowledge, a Scientologist, whose celebrity members tend to be vocal vaccine opponents.
The issue here is that anti-vaccine sentiments from celebrities can really directly harm public health: Jenny McCarthy famously became the face of anti-vaccine celebrity parenthood in the mid-2000s, when she blamed her son’s autism diagnosis, in part, on the MMR vaccine, which vaccine opponents often single out as being especially dangerous. The effect of anti-vax sentiment in that time period was noticeable and it was devastating: In 2006, the first child in England in more than a decade died from measles; in 2008, the United States reported 131 measles cases in the first half of the year alone, more than had been seen at any time since 1996.