Feminists Outraged After Model Compares Bikini Butts With Fat Friend: ‘This is a Hate Crime’

“She knew exactly what she was doing when she posted this photo.”

Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski triggered a wave out feminist outrage last week when she posted a photo to Instagram of her and a female friend lying on the beach in bathing suits. 

Ratajkowski, 27, captioned the black-and-white photo of the women’s backsides: “beach buns.” She also tagged her Inamorata swimwear life, which aims to “reject the old tired myths about body image” and “embrace the full spectrum of the female form.”

However, many of Ratajkowski’s 22.1 million followers did not feel embraced. She was widely accused of “body shaming” her fat modeling partner by drawing a contrast between their bodies.

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“Posting this is a hate crime against that girl,” one Instagram user said.

“I don’t care if i had the confidence of the entire world.. it would shatter after this picture,” said another woman.

View this post on Instagram

Beach buns @inamoratawoman

A post shared by Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) on Mar 11, 2019 at 11:44am PDT

Some women blamed Ratajkowski for setting her friend up to be bullied.

“Surely she would have known people would write these disgusting comments,” said one commenter. “Why would she subject her friend to this humiliation and online bullying by posting this?”

Others suggested the model – who has been described as physically “perfect” – had posted the photo to make herself look good.

“Oh please. She knew exactly what she was doing when she posted this photo,” someone said. “She has the better body, she knows she does (but pretends she doesn’t) and she’s happy about that.”

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Echoing a number of commenters who defended her, Ratajkowski weighed in by saying that “all these haters are crazy” for holding her friend to a narrow standard of beauty.

“I love my friend[‘]s body and both her and I think she looks great here!” she said. “And I’m proud she’s rocking my suits. All these haters are crazy. Just because you’re used to seeing one body type on the internet doesn’t mean that that’s the only kind that should be considered “beautiful.”

Ratajkowski later repeated the point in an Instagram story.

View this post on Instagram

Just reminiscing ??

A post shared by Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) on Oct 19, 2018 at 6:52am PDT

Still, the online responses to her post underlined the gap between the ideals of the body positivity movement and reality. Ratajkowski would seemingly have learned her lesson from starring as the hot friend in last year’s Amy Schumer vehicle “I Feel Pretty.”

Although the movie aimed to be a woke comedy, championing every woman as beautiful, it was widely panned as “fat-phobic” for supposedly getting laughs at the expense of fat girls. Some plus-size feminists complained that Schumer wasn’t fat enough to represent their movement.  

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