Back in January, fans were alarmed when Kat Von D announced that her baby would be unvaccinated. Yikes.
Accusations that she is an anti-vaxxer only added to her problems, as for years, rumors have abounded that she is, well, a Nazi.
In an emotional video, Kat Von D sits down to explain to fans how those rumors began and to unequivocally state that she’s nothing of the sort.
"As a lot of you know," Kat says at the beginning of the video. "I have been getting a ton of hate over two different controversial topics."
"Both of which are pretty hard for me to talk about," she admits. "But I just really want to try my best to clear the air."
"Just to set the record straight from the beginning," Kat affirms. "I just want to say that I am not anti-Semitic and I am not an anti-vaxxer"
We live in a time when some will balk at rejecting either label.
If you’ve ever seen some dirtbag YouTuber say "well, define Nazi" when confronted on Twitter, you know that Kat is already doing pretty well.
We know how she got labeled as an anti-vaxxer. But how did folks decide that she’s a Nazi?
"Out of every comment I’ve gotten, the ones that are calling me and family Nazis," Kat says. "Those are the ones that really just don’t sit well for me."
"If anything," she says. "They’re extremely offensive and super hurtful."
Kat, having already affirmed that she is not a Nazi, notes that she and her family are Mexican by birth.
Her mother even has dark skin, she notes.
She explains that the Nazi rumors began with a doctored photo created by a jealous coworker.
Kat Von D says that one of her co-stars on Miami Ink was very insecure about her popularity on the show.
She says that she was hazed on set, and that she was also sexually harassed and groped by this jealous male castmate.
Kat planned to leave the show after an incident in which she was groped and none of the witnesses, who were castmates, responded.
She says that the jealous castmate, who had tried to blackmail the network into canceling her show, had doctored a photo of her to make it look Nazi-esque.
When she got her own show, she says, he went to media outlets and pushed this false narrative.
"Overnight," Kat laments. "I was just falsely branded as an anti-Semite and I had no idea how to handle it or what to do."
"I am not an anti-vaxxer,” Kat clarifies, addressing the more recent controversy.
“What I am is a first-time mother," she says. "I’m one of those moms that reads everything."
Kat explains: "I mean I read everything from ingredients in foods to cleaning supplies to medicines."
"Basically anything that is going in my baby or on my baby," she says. "I research like a complete and total nerd."
Sometimes, when people without medical degrees or a keen grasp of biochemistry look at ingredients on life-saving medicines, they get needlessly alarmed.
"So back when I was pregnant, somebody asked me on Instagram if we were vaccinating our baby," Kat details.
"And after doing a bunch of research and reading the ingredients, naturally I experienced some hesitancy,” she admits.
“If I would have known that I would have let so many people down with that," she shares. "I would have never, ever shared where we were at with it at that time."
Note that she sounds sorry for speaking out, not sorry for her scientifically unsound conclusion back in January.
But, you know, this is at least progress.
"Since then, we have decided as parents to consult with our pediatrician and just let him educate us and guide us,” Kat promises fans.
“But, unlike before," she says. "I have learned my lesson and I am choosing not to make our decision public."
While any pediatrician who isn’t a total quack would advise Kat to get her baby fully vaccinated, she doesn’t really promise that.
It does sound like she’s genuinely sorry that fans were upset.
But when a parent declines to vaccinate, fans are not the victims — the child, and perhaps countless others, are put at risk.
We hope that Kat will understand the vital importance of vaccinations for protecting the child in question and those who truly cannot be vaccinated.
You can view the entirety of Kat Von D’s YouTube video here.
It is very moving.
For the record, there were other reasons for which Kat was accused of being a Nazi.
Her ex-boyfriend, Jesse James, has appeared in some extremely questionable photos alongside Nazi imagery.
She also once gave a makeup product an extremely unfortunate name. We hope that it was just an oversight.
For what it’s worth, we don’t believe that Kat Von D is a Nazi.
As for vaccinations, we can only say that we are very confident that she does not want to be labeled as an anti-vaxxer.