Florida couple defends 'Handmaid's Tale'-inspired pregnancy photoshoot amid backlash of 'promoting rape': 'We don't give a f***'
A Florida couple decided to announce their pregnancy by doing a 'Handmaid's Tale'-themed photoshoot. As soon as they posted photos from the shoot on their social media page, they were met with a barrage of negative comments as users accused the pair of promoting "rape culture."
Leah Hampton, 28, and her husband Marquis Wimberly, 27 were bombarded with hateful comments as soon as they shared the happy news of the new addition to their family by sharing the snaps, which were heavily inspired by 'Handmaid's Tale' - a television drama based on the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood.
The couples are fans of the hit Hulu show, where fertile women, called handmaids, are treated as the property of the state and forced into sexual servitude to repopulate a barren world.
To share the news of Leah's pregnancy online, the first-time parents from Orlando, Florida decided to use the show's controversial imagery as the theme of their photoshoot.
Hampton, a social worker, dressed in the iconic handmaid's uniforms - the red robes with white bonnet while Wimberly, a marketing manager, wore a suit to look like one of the "male masters," who rape and impregnate the fertile women on the show.
In one of the pictures, Wimberly is seen doing up his tie while his wife lies on the bed behind him, in a complacent posture that reminded many of a rape scene from the show. Another suggestive snap showed Hampton across a kitchen counter, looking downwards pretending to be upset by something.
Hampton shared the photos with the caption: "Blessed Day! We are happy to announce that I am carrying the precious fruit, arriving February 2020.. Happy Halloween!"
The photos soon went viral for all the wrong reasons, racking up 4,500 shares and 15,000 comments, most of them negative. While some users sarcastically congratulated the couple on the birth of their "rape baby," others called the photoshoot "ignorance at its most repugnant."
"Do they not realize they're literally promoting rape by doing this photoshoot?" one commenter wrote, while another noted that while the theme was "a bit creepy and seems to glorify enslaving women as incubators. BUT your house is gorgeous."
Instead of taking the photos down, Hampton took to Facebook to defend their chosen theme for the shoot.
"Some people have been so viscerally moved by the Handmaid's Tale that our photoshoot has upset their sensitivities. They care so deeply and passionately about women that they have resorted to harassing a pregnant woman on Facebook. Folks, we are unmoved. We hope you continue to enjoy our Halloween/Baby Announcement photos and our take on the fictitious television show, the Handmaid's Tale. Not everyone will like or agree with our theme. We don't give a f***," she wrote.