Instagram’s blue check means that an account is the “authentic presence of the public figure, celebrity or global brand it represents.” The verified badge is meant to mark celebrities, bloggers, and influencers as trustworthy, genuine, and honest.
Known as Mother of Daughters to over 700k followers, Clemmie Hooper used the photo sharing platform to share idyllic pictures of her husband and four daughters- but behind the scenes, things were far from picture perfect.
Under a false identity, the midwife turned influencer harassed and bullied other bloggers and their families–including her own husband, father_of_daughters–on a UK gossip site, Tattle Life. Using the alias “Alice in Wanderlust,” Clemmie Hooper attacked bloggers, using details they’d entrusted her with during her “Birth Stories” podcast.
Hooper’s trolling seemed be focused on black women–just a week after Make Motherhood Diverse‘s founder Candice Brathwaithe appeared on the podcast to discuss health disparities, like the fact that black women are 5 times more likely to die during birth; Hooper took to Tattle Life as Alice in Wanderlust to brand Brathwaite as “really aggressive” and “weaponizing race.”
After an earlier miscarriage, the happy news of Kelichi Okafor’s pregnancy went viral. But when the popular blogger found her name in Tattle Life posts aiming to discredit Brathwaite, “because I frequently sing Candice’s praises while reminding my followers of the racism she and other black women face in whichever industry we find ourselves,” she went live on Instagram to share mortality rates and explain why, as a birth professional, Hooper’s views were especially troubling.
Clemmie’s defenders have been reporting my Instagram stories and getting them taken down for “bullying” even though I am speaking about a white woman who has been bullying Black women online for months.
This is racism at work.
— machine gun Kele (@kelechnekoff) November 9, 2019
Within hours, “Alice” supporters reported Okafor’s account, and it was removed from the app for claims of bullying. Although the account was later reinstated, it was clear where Instagram stood on the issue.
Hooper’s account is still active, although her follower count now stands at 662k.
Okafor delivered her rainbow baby at the UK’s King’s College Hospital–the very same hospital where Clemmie Hooper serves as a midwife.
Across the world, Black women face the implicit biases of medical professionals. Over the course of one year, NPR and ProPublica collected stories from over 200 African American mothers. Although the details of each mother’s story was different, one thing remained the same–the feeling of being disrespected and disbelieved by medical providers.
When Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors had an emergency c-section in 2016, her surgeon “never explained what he was doing to me.” Three weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Shalon Irving died of pregnancy related hypertension. When she complained of headaches and swelling in her legs and feet, hospital staff sent her hone with a prescription and told her mother, “Don’t worry about it, things are calming down.” She collapsed on January 24, 2016, and never regained consciousness. This January, LaShonda Hazard and her unborn baby died at Women and Infants Hospital. In a Facebook post, the 27-year old shared that she was in so much pain that she felt like she was “literally dying.”
Even tennis superstar Serena Williams, who had an emergency c-section in 2018, told Vogue magazine that after giving birth to her daughter, she had to fight to get health providers to pay attention to the signs of a pulmonary embolism. A nurse dismissed her claims, telling her that the medicine she’d been given was making her confused.
Clemmie Hooper bullied black women for 8 months, but the medical system has been bullying us for years.
According to data from the Center for Disease Control, Black mothers in the United States are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy or birth related causes than white women. In New York city alone, black mothers are 12 times more likely to die than white mothers. The New York Times reports that there is “an inescapable atmosphere of societal and systemic racism” that can “create a kind of toxic psychological stress, resulting in conditions…that can lead directly to higher rates of infant and maternal death.”
Although obstetrics was introduced into America in the mid to late 1700s, African women had been training and practicing as midwives for hundreds of years. Black midwives attended 75% of births in the 1940’s, ushering women into motherhood.
Shafia Munroe, a renowned midwife, doula trainer, motivational speaker and cultural competency trainer, describes the midwife’s historical role, saying, “She played a large part in shaping cultural perceptions of motherhood as well as functioning as officiate in the rite of passage of becoming a mother. She carried valuable information, passed on by predecessors across generations, that positively impacted the social health of the family structure and overall health of the community.”
Midwives serve as an important piece of the birth experience. With her actions, Clemmie Hooper has not only betrayed her blogging community, she’s shattered the trust of mothers everywhere. In a piece for Grazia, Okafor noted, “The Nursing & Midwifery Council is very clear on how medical professionals should behave and I believe that Hooper has brought the reputation of midwives into disrepute.”
And while Clemmie Hooper has offered somewhat of an apology for what she’s done, there’s no apology that can make up for the health disparities in maternal health or the lack of care and concern that black women receive in a medical setting.
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