Can We Please Leave Gypsy Rose's Love Life Alone?

Gypsy Rose Blanchard is finally free from prison, is happily married, and is spending time with her family. The problem is people won’t leave her alone, and her comment section is full of nosy trolls. Hey Gypsy Rose, what does your husband do? How old is he? How did you guys meet? Do you regret what you did? Others have even begun making fun of her man, Ryan Anderson. 

One comment on Anderson's post on social media reads, "I know a creep when I see one." Someone else asked, "Am I the only one who finds him creepy? And something weird with him?"

After he received a barrage of negative comments on his appearance, Gypsy Rose came to his defense. "Ryan, don't listen to the haters," she wrote on Instagram on January 2, 2023. "I love you, and you love me. We do not owe anyone anything. Our family is who matters. If you get likes and good comments great, if you get hate then whatever because THEY DON'T MATTER. I love you."

Besides the disrespectful comments, another thing I also witnessed on TikTok was weird fan edits and a video of someone buying numerous merchandise with Gypsy Rose's face on it and placing it all over their house, thinking that it would be hilarious. It's not funny. It's just weird, chronically online behavior.

Can We Stop Being Weird?

Here's my take on all of this: Can we please give Gypsy Rose the space and privacy she finally deserves? Let's leave her love life alone; let's not ask what she's doing today or tomorrow, and let's not dox her family members. Gypsy Rose endured immense trauma already and was exploited by the one person who was supposed to protect her. If we can all just stop asking her questions and spamming her socials, we can allow her to adjust to her life outside of prison, and it can also help her rebuild her identity without feeling like she's in the spotlight. The negative comments that she received about her and her husband have the potential to re-traumatize her since she was psychologically tormented. 

If you don’t remember the details surrounding Gypsy Rose’s story, here's a refresher: She grew up with an abusive mother (Dee Dee Blanchard) with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. 

What Happened to Gypsy Rose?

When Gypsy Rose was only 8, Dee Dee claimed she suffered from leukemia and muscular dystrophy – so she was forced to be in a wheelchair and use a feeding tube. Dee Dee would also claim that her daughter suffered from seizures, asthma, and hearing and visual impairments, resulting in numerous diagnoses and medical interventions. Sadly, even Gypsy-Rose’s family had no idea Dee Dee was falsifying her ailments. 

The young girl was prescribed a trove of medications and used a breathing machine to sleep. She underwent unnecessary surgeries, including procedures on her eyes. Her mother would put Orajel on her gums to make her drool at doctor's appointments, leading to the removal of her salivary glands. 

At the age of 14, a neurologist suspected that Gypsy Rose was a victim of lifelong abuse. However, he never reported it. In later interviews, he stated there wasn't enough evidence to act. In 2009, authorities received an anonymous report stating that Dee Dee's accounts of her child’s ailments "had no medical basis," according to Biography. Two caseworkers visited their home, but Dee Dee convinced them there was no issue.

Dee Dee also began lying about Gypsy Rose's age as she got older. In 2011, 19-year-old Gypsy tried to get away with a man she met at a science fiction convention. Dee Dee convinced the man that Gypsy Rose was a minor, although she was an adult. But there was no stopping her – behind her mother's back, she joined a Christian dating site, where she met Nicholas Godejohn.

She told him about Dee Dee's actions and asked him to kill her so that they could be together. In 2015, Godejohn came to her residence and murdered her mother. As a result, Godejohn will spend life in prison, while Gypsy Rose served eight years of prison sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in 2016. She was released on December 28, 2023, at the age of 32. 

Some say that Gypsy Rose deserved to be in jail for life. Others disagree. Dr. Marc Feldman, a Munchausen syndrome by proxy expert, said this about her actions: “The control was total in the same sense that the control of a kidnapped victim sometimes is total. Her daughter was, in essence, a hostage, and I think we can understand the crime that occurred subsequently in terms of a hostage trying to gain escape.” 

The control was total in the same sense that the control of a kidnapped victim sometimes is total.

I believe that Gypsy Rose's actions, while wrong, were driven by a survival instinct. The adults in her life failed her. She had no one to turn to. She wanted to escape a life of manipulation, abuse, and coercion; Gypsy Rose desired to be free from all of the medication, the wheelchair, and procedures that harmed her body. You could say she acted in self-defense – had her mother kept inundating her with medical malpractice, she could have died. It’s understandable to many when parents retaliate against their children’s abusers. In this case, Gypsy acted by herself. 

But whatever your opinion is, just leave her alone.

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