Darius Jackson, father of Keke Palmer’s child and until further notice, her boyfriend (though it's not looking good for him), is currently catching heat for shaming the actress and singer on social media. Judging by the comments under various posts discussing the matter, the heat is well deserved.
For context, Palmer, 29, recently went to Usher's residency in Las Vegas with her girls and wore a black sheer Givenchy dress. It’s important to note that the mom of one has been glowing in a big way since giving birth to her son, Leodis, in February. Jackson was displeased with his partner’s outfit and thought Twitter was a great outlet to vent that displeasure.
“It’s the outfit tho … you a mom,” Jackson, 29, wrote in a Tweet in response to a video gone viral of Palmer being serenaded by Usher, 44, and briefly twirling, allowing her backside to be seen.
Some social media commenters thought Jackson was just fooling around as Palmer has been jokingly saying she’s "a mother" in her recent interviews. Leodis’s father apparently wasn’t playing though, as he doubled down on his views in a subsequent tweet.
“We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others & he gets told how much of a hater he is,” he wrote via Twitter. “This is my family & my representation. I have standards & morals to what I believe. I rest my case.”
There is so much to unpack here, so let’s get right into it.
It is beyond me how a man in the 21st century can be so tone deaf about so many things simultaneously. One, using motherhood to shame a woman because you don’t like her outfit choice is crazy considering the number of loud and visible conversations around body positivity, postpartum depression and negative body image postpartum that have been had. Two, trying to use the internet to shame women into submission in 2023 is a losing battle and recipe for a dragging; especially a woman as confident and established as Keke Palmer. Finally, if anyone hasn’t noticed, we are giving toxic masculinity the boot in 2023. Trying to use humiliation as a tool to assert your manhood and leadership as the head of household is pretty lame.
Those of us listening to what’s going on know postpartum depression disproportionately affects Black women—the risk is 1.6 times higher for Black women than White women. Additionally, a 2022 study found 68.8% of women were dissatisfied with their current body weight and figure after giving birth. As a mom, I can say five years after delivering my child that I still struggle with my figure and probably have some body dysmorphia. Despite these facts, you have this glorious Black woman glowing, happy, and loving her new body, and her own partner interrupted that to try and publicly humiliate her. He shames her for wearing clothes he met her wearing just because she’s now a mom and, specifically, a mother to his child, as if her outfits determine how good of a mother she is and sexiness ends when motherhood begins. I must add, since the internet does not forget, Twitter users swiftly pulled out a video Jackson posted of Palmer clapping those same "booty cheeks" for him that he’s now outraged to find are out in public. So maybe her blessed cheeks and how she’s allegedly representing their family aren’t the real problems here.
As a man, you might have feelings about how your partner dresses. Some argue that men shouldn’t have opinions about how a woman dresses because it’s her body, but it happens. Nonetheless, bringing those feelings to the internet makes a private discussion a public discourse. Maybe Jackson thought the internet would side with him and Palmer would respect his authority more after those tweets. Maybe he asked her not to wear that outfit, she did anyway, and he posted the tweets to spite her. Either way, all Jackson did was invite strangers into his home and potentially make what could have been a resolvable agreement an explosive situation that didn't end well. (At the time of writing, Palmer and Jackson no longer follow one another on Instagram.)
That’s a perfect segue into my next point about toxic masculinity. True leaders and people with authority know that you don’t demand respect, you earn it. There is nothing respectable about shaming your partner online. As the so-called head of his household, that is not leading with love, empathy, or respect. Some may even call it manipulative and controlling. Emotionally healthy women in 2023 aren’t listening to men who try to assert their authority that way.
If you ask me (I know nobody did), the tweets are giving misdirected anger and projecting. Jackson seems more pressed that his girlfriend was being serenaded by the legendary Usher while he was home with the baby. And if he was mad about it, he should have said that — but the internet still wasn’t the place to do so. Some argue that Jackson is jealous because this is Palmer’s season. Nowadays, you can’t open any of your social media apps without seeing the new muva glowing and giving all shades of goddess. Truthfully, that could make any insecure man buckle at his knees. But buckle privately, sir.
A few nuggets we can all take away from this saga is that publicly shaming someone you love is never the way to handle a disagreement. Also, women can be sexy before and after having kids and the way a woman dresses isn’t a measure of the type of mother she is. And finally, real emotionally intelligent men don’t use shame to control the women they love. Instead, they use healthy communication, respect and self-reflection to lead their households, Mr. Jackson.