At this point right-wingers would believe a conspiracy theory about the sky actually being orange if it came from the mouth of someone they trust, so their newest one probably shouldn't be surprising.
And yet, here we are: Internet weirdos are convinced that Anne Hathaway is faking her pregnancy with a prosthetic belly she bares on red carpets.
Why Hathaway would go to such lengths when she could just as easily wear less revealing clothes to throw people off the scent is anyone's guess.
But the conspiracy theorists will not be deterred: They took one look at Hathaway's bump on the red carpet for the premiere of The End of Oak Street and were convinced it's all an elaborate scam.
The flap began with Hathaway appearing on the red carpet in a top that revealed her bump, along with a pair of low-rise jeans.
As people who aren't weird and actually know what they're talking about have pointed out, Hathaway is "carrying high," with a compact, pointy bump, one of many completely normal shapes for a pregnant belly.
But as the saying goes, "everything seems like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works," and that seems to have seized the internet. (Well, that and the knowledge that the accusation would go viral and make them lots of money.)
Soon, bizarre X posts like the one below started going viral with accusations that Hathaway is wearing a prosthesis.
The "evidence," such as it is, seems to be that Hathaway's skin was wrinkled around her waistband. Which is what happens to skin beneath a waistband, especially when there's a belly pushing down on the fabric when you sit.
But to weirdos, it was the smoking gun that Hathaway was wearing a prosthesis.
And of course, like everything with these people, the conspiracy theory posits that the reason Hathaway is wearing a prosthesis is because she's secretly trans and can't get pregnant in the first place.
Isn't it fascinating how a huge proportion of the country is quite literally insane?
Anyway, the conspiracy theory went so viral among the "they think we're stupid" crowd that Hathaway actually addressed it on her own Instagram.
In a post, she confirmed that she wore "fake hair, real bump" to the premiere in question, seemingly referencing the ludicrous rumors swirling about her body.
And of course, there's a bigger issue here than whackjobs being whackjobs: People really feel entitled to pick apart women's bodies even when they're not doing so on the basis of a conspiracy theory.
There were plenty of posts online mystified by the look of Hathaway's belly and wondering why it looks the way it does.
The answer, of course, is simply that... that is how it looks. Everyone's body is different! What are any of you talking about?!
And there were even more people indignant that Hathaway would bare her belly in the first place, with several people on X telling her variations of "put that away."
Thankfully, there are still people in this world who haven't lost their minds and found this whole thing a bit disturbing.
At least Hathaway is in good company: Both Meghan Markle and queen Beyoncé have been the subjects of the exact same conspiracy theory in recent years. Keep up the good work, right-wing weirdos...
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