Keke Palmer was mom shamed by boyfriend Darius Jackson for her outfit

Darius Jackson — best known as actress and singer Keke Palmer’s boyfriend and father to her son — decided to critique her outfit choice for all to see on Twitter.

“A man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others,” Jackson tweeted Wednesday afternoon, provoked by video of Palmer wearing a sheer, long-sleeved black dress over a bodysuit at a July 4 Usher concert.

Less than 24 hours later, Jackson’s Twitter and Instagram accounts vanished amid widespread outrage over his “mom shaming,” — the age-old practice, which seemed to become even more commonplace during the pandemic, of a mother being openly tutted for her choices.

The social media skirmish began after Palmer, 29, was serenaded by Usher onstage at the R&B singer’s Las Vegas residency show. In clips from the night, Palmer smiles and sways in her ensemble as Usher sings his 2010 song “There Goes My Baby.”

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Jackson, whose son with Palmer was born this year, tweeted his discontent shortly after the clip began circulating: “It’s the outfit tho.. you a mom.”

He doubled down with another post, complaining that he was being called a “hater” by fans of Palmer, who launched the new TV network KeyTV after starring in Jordan Peele’s “Nope” last year.

“This is my family & my representation. I have standards & morals to what I believe,” Jackson wrote. “I rest my case.”

By Thursday morning, all his tweets were gone.

Mothers have been judged for centuries, if not much longer, for their parenting decisions, such as whether they use pain medication during child birth, where they breast feed, how they discipline or dress their children, and how they dress themselves. Such judging has acquired widespread criticism in the internet age, with the term “mom shaming” appearing more and more in news articles over the last decade and some therapists speaking about the harm it causes.

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Celebrities often end up as targets. Chrissy Teigen was mom-shamed for taking too long to schedule her daughter Luna’s first dentist appointment and for letting her son Miles take his first steps too close to a marble bathtub. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was called “unmaternal” by author Emily Giffin in 2020 for holding her squirming baby Archie in her lap as she read him a book.

But mom shaming cuts across classes. A C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital survey from 2017 found that about 6 in 10 mothers of children 5 years or younger experienced mom shaming — saying they received criticism about their parenting choices.

In other words, Palmer isn’t alone.

The backlash against her boyfriend was swift and nearly unanimous. Some on social media noted that Palmer has worn several similar outfits since becoming a mom in February, without public criticism from Jackson.

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“CALL the mother of ur child instead of tweeting her????” one Twitter user commented.

“This generation’s men is too comfortable disrespecting women in public” Christian Walker, a conservative influencer and the son of former Senate nominee Herschel Walker (R), said on TikTok. “I’m going to take a gander and say that since your woman is the breadwinner and probably takes care of you, you wanted to display your manhood in public and try to make a fool of her to make yourself look better.”

Palmer didn’t publicly reply to her boyfriend’s comments. But hours after Jackson made her name trend on Twitter, she posted more images of her concert outfit to Instagram.

“I wish I had taken more pictures but we were running late!” she wrote.

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