By the time Remi Bader, who built her career as a plus-size influencer with over 2 million followers on TikTok, went on Khloé Kardashian’s podcast to address her smaller body, it had been subject to nearly a year and a half of speculation.
Fans were certain Bader had betrayed them, but exactly how and in what way was up for debate: Had she pumped the body positivity movement for cash and then turned her back on it by getting thin? Was the real problem that she owed it to her followers to explain how she had lost the weight?
On Khloe in Wonderland, Bader revealed that she had undergone weight-loss surgery for numerous mental and physical health reasons, including a binge-eating disorder, a 100-pound weight gain, and chronic back pain. She also shared what she describes as the “brutal” recovery experience after getting a bariatric procedure known as SADI-S, or single anastomosis duodeno-ileal bypass with sleeve gastrectomy. The procedure caused weeks of incessant vomiting and even led her to contemplate suicide.
These harrowing revelations failed to stop the backlash; indeed, it had only just begun.
For better or worse, the way we discuss weight loss has changed dramatically. Historically, shedding pounds garnered an automatic congratulations (see Oprah and her wheelbarrow of fat in 1988, or Valerie Bertinelli’s Jenny Craig ads almost two decades later). But a conversation that morphed with the body positivity movement of the 2010s — finally cheering women for the bodies they already had — has only grown more complicated with the rise of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
The use of these Type 2 diabetes medications for weight loss has sparked ethical concerns regarding access to the drug for people with diabetes. It’s also prompted an even louder panic around what it means to be a certain weight. For many, the drug’s popularity signals a return to the narrow beauty standards of the ’90s and 2000s and a reversal of more recent attitudes. While thinness has never truly gone out of style, the previous decade saw the rise of BBLs and a certain type of curvy body being celebrated in mainstream culture.
Now, in a phenomenon born out of rightful frustration that impossible beauty standards are making a comeback, people have seemingly never been more comfortable interrogating people’s bodies and the choices they make for them.
When a body belongs to the internet
Despite the backlash — and the raw, upsetting details — Bader’s interview arguably makes for a refreshing listen. It’s a departure from the more neatly packaged, “inspirational” weight-loss stories that the public has come to expect from celebrities, including Kardashian. Celebrity weight-loss narratives are often framed as moral accomplishments and acts of discipline, while Bader’s was positioned as more of a struggle to survive. It felt extremely on-brand for Bader, whose brutal honesty about navigating the world as a plus-size woman made her internet-famous.
Bader initially gained a following back in 2020 doing “realistic hauls.” In these videos, Bader tries on clothing from popular brands, demonstrating how awkwardly they fit her body compared to the models on the websites. These funny, personable (if not entirely original) videos propelled her to millions of followers and a profitable but precarious level of fame: the parasocial BFF.
As a plus-size person on an app dominated by size-2 influencers and flooded with the latest weight-loss trends, she was able to cut through the noise. Inevitably, she transcended the role of a personality. A 2023 interview with Bader in People called her the face of the body positivity movement, while Allure hailed her as TikTok’s “hero of plus-size fashion.”
So when Bader began getting visibly smaller last year, posting workout videos without disclosing her surgery, she was met with skepticism. Many of her fans were confused and disappointed, given that she no longer seemed to fall under the category of “plus-size influencer.” Bader now admits she wasn’t sure how to initially address all the speculation and anger from fans. In the wake of her tell-all interview, several followers say that Bader blocked them when they inquired about the drastic weight loss in her comments section.
These are just some of the criticisms being hurled at Bader after disclosing her weight-loss surgery: that she responded poorly to fans’ concerns, that she’s no longer relatable, that she betrayed her following, that she used an underserved group to gain money and fame.
Even those defending Bader’s right to lose weight have described the entire fallout as a branding disaster. Content creator Franchesca Ramsey said in a TikTok that Bader made a “crucial mistake” in her lack of transparency and mass blocking: “She completely abandoned the core tenets of her brand: being honest, being plus-sized, and being relatable.”
Celebrity weight loss has never been more complicated
While these responses are all a bit reductive and ignore the personal factors that led Bader to getting surgery, they’re not surprising. In fact, they demonstrate a collective discomfort around celebrity weight loss that feels especially apparent in the age of Ozempic.
Bader embarking on a press tour, including a profile in Self, to disclose her weight-loss journey is a bit of a rarity nowadays. For the most part, the era of famous people participating in magazine profiles devoted to their weight loss and divulging their diets on talk shows are gone. The few media figures eager to share at least some of the secrets behind their body transformations are Oprah Winfrey and occasionally the Kardashians. Winfrey, specifically, has long dedicated her former talk show, magazine, and other platforms to sharing her struggles with weight gain and her methods for weight loss. Most recently, she stepped down from her decade-long position as a board member for WeightWatchers after she disclosed that she was using an unnamed weight-loss medication. Last year, she hosted a TV special about the impact of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro.
More and more, public figures are adopting a code of silence around their physical appearances. The general rule that “you shouldn’t comment on other people’s bodies” has become a way for celebrities — like Ariana Grande, for example — to shut down online speculation and unwanted press. (It’s rarely ever effective.) Others, like Adele, have defended their weight loss as a personal choice that doesn’t need explanation.
Meanwhile, the occasional celebrity who chooses to share their weight loss is prone to intense criticism. This is evident beyond the backlash to Bader. Lizzo, another voice for body positivity, has publicized her weight-loss goals on social media over the past year and has garnered similar comments to Bader claiming that she’s abandoning her previously “inclusive” brand. In a post-Ozempic climate, weight loss is taken personally by fans, especially those who saw their size represented by someone famous and admired; that size then shrinking is looked at as contributing to a more anti-fat culture.
Health and culture writer Mikala Jamison, who writes the newsletter Body Type, sees the overwhelmingly negative reaction to public weight losses like Bader’s as “overcorrection to diet culture.”
“It’s understandable why people are very up in arms, or just concerned, about diet culture and this pursuit of thinness that we’re seeing more of,” Jamison said. “It’s good, and we need that. But people feel as though they’re performing some kind of activism by just talking about how this person’s skinny now, or [saying] ‘I’m worried about this person.’”
In Bader’s case, the knee-jerk reaction from her following especially feels like a missed opportunity, given all of the information she divulged. Her experience as a plus-size person in the public eye speaks to something Jamison says we all know but find it hard to talk about: “If you have ever in your life been truly fat, or experienced personal and systemic bias because of your weight, that’s incredibly hard.”
Maybe it’s because Bader’s weight-loss story emphasizes this reality so starkly that it’s been difficult for social media to really engage with it. On one hand, she dispelled the dream that she sold to her followers, that she could be both comfortable and successful in a bigger body — although that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for others.
She also demonstrated how tough losing weight and treating an eating disorder can be, even with significant resources. In her Self profile, Bader said she tried a laundry list of treatments, including antidepressants, Ozempic, other weight-loss medications, and Overeaters Anonymous meetings. After getting off of Ozempic, she said her binge-eating disorder “came back with a vengeance.”
Even as Bader speaks about her post-surgery body, she sounds unsure about the future. “I think it helped me, but will it help me in a year?” she told Self. “What if I gain all the weight back? What if I get sick from the [lack of] nutrients? I’m not a doctor. I don’t have it all figured out.”
Despite claims that she’s abandoned her old persona, it didn’t feel like Bader was unveiling a new version of herself. It was instead a continuation of the same message she relayed in her try-on hauls: that having a body, particularly a plus-size one, can be hard. Now, making changes to that body publicly — with all the judgment that comes with it — might be even harder.
The post How an influencer’s weight loss triggered an internet meltdown appeared first on Vox.
