When Annielaurie Grace posted a video showing her pregnancy on TikTok, she did not expect the attention to end up focusing on a very specific part of her body: her belly. The 33-year-old woman from Ohio, United States, was expecting her fourth baby when, on 4 July 2026, she shared a video in which she was wearing a blue bikini and a red sweatshirt that was partially lifted.
The difference was obvious: her abdomen was much paler than the rest of her skin. One comment even asked jokingly: “Is your baby a Cullen, perhaps?”, referring to the vampire family from Twilight. The video ended up racking up millions of views, and the reactions ranged from jokes to some rather cruel comments about her appearance.
But the explanation was much simpler. Grace told PEOPLE that she is “naturally very, very pale” and that she had worn one-piece swimsuits for most of her life. As a result, her belly had hardly ever been exposed to the sun, unlike the rest of her body, where she does have tan lines.
The woman also clarified that there was no medical concern related to the appearance of her abdomen. Her doctors were not worried, and neither was her dermatologist. In fact, at the beginning of that spring, they had removed a spot from her stomach for testing, and the result was completely normal.
The pregnancy itself had not been completely easy. Grace suffered hyperemesis gravidarum during the first few weeks, to the point that she spent much of her time in bed and needed a couple of intravenous treatments. The symptoms subsided around 22 to 24 weeks, and that was when she began sharing more about her pregnancy on social media.
Over time, some comments stopped being funny. Grace said that certain users began writing things she found unpleasant and that some comments were removed by TikTok. Even so, she said she was not personally affected and that she was more concerned that other pregnant women might feel bad about their own bodies because of similar comments.