Consider your algorithm supremely clean if this debate hasn’t plagued your feed yet. Kareena Kapoor Khan has been at the forefront of headlines this week and the reason – considering you’re an ally – should ideally leave you stumped. A video of the actor stepping out of the gym was recently captured and all it took was a quick 5 minutes for the pregnancy rumour mill to start churning over time. Speculations about a third Pataudi youngling got so rampant that her team had to directly address the rumours, denying any baby being on the way for Kareena. While all the hullabaloo should have ideally stopped right there, the internet seems to be having a field day, consistently putting two and two together on how that one blurry video absolutely has to be proof of her being pregnant. This is less about the vanity to spend perfectly good hours in the day working out the equation that anything less than a chiseled belly on a woman equals to her being pregnant. The intensity of this one-sided debate would almost have you believe that if a woman looks any different than how she usually does, there absolutely cannot be any explanation or ‘excuse’ besides her growing a baby within.

Women’s bodies have historically been defacto targets for societal dialogue. Just take the whole ‘dad bod’ paradox into consideration. A man being ‘out of shape’ – not that there should be any rule of thumb standards for bodies in general – think loose muscles on the arms, a hint of moobs and an evident belly, is all written off as the rather endearing ‘dad bod’, so much so, that men are actually repeatedly assured how fitting this bill is actually a sign of them not being vain; proof of the fact that they value putting in their hours at work as opposed to a gym – it’s almost a bona fide sign of them being a good provider! Now flip the script. When was the last time you heard ‘mom bod‘ being lauded as the sign of a woman balancing her own life, career as well as motherhood, all in one go? At best, you’ll find specimens on the internet which refer to this perfectly normal state of being for the female body in a sympathetic twang at best with people asking women to ‘hang in there’ as they ‘bounce back’.

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Earlier today, Kareena’s sister-in-law, Saba Pataudi, took to her Instagram handle to call out the incessant speculation. She wrote: “A bad angle … Or a bad hair day! How can everyone assume another extreme!! She walked out of an airport looking slick, classy and slim, and today out of a gym! That’s it,” she wrote in the caption, adding, “I’ve been convincing my sister to have a 2nd child … wish that was true! She’ll kill me for saying it! Live and let live guys. Some things are left private. No speculation needed.”

The last line of what Saba wrote should be the rule of thumb – not something that needs to be asserted over and over and over again. What is it going to take to just leave women and their bodies alone?