Celeste Barber Is Being Called Out For Her Misogynistic Post About Emily Ratajkowski
Apparently, you can't be objectified if you've ever worn a bikini before...
Celeste Barber has built an impressive fanbase by recreating unrealistic celebrity photos on Instagram. Normally, her content is pretty harmless and, sometimes, it’s incredibly impactful.
Over the years, Barber has used her platform to raise more than $51 million for bushfire relief, to troll anti-vaxxers who think they know more than nurses, and to call out the Australian government for making the country lag behind in vaccination rates.
Barber was able to do all these things because she built a following of over eight-million on Instagram by being a bit of a troll. Using her body to mock celebrities with unattainable figures, or to poke fun at those who pose in strange positions, Barber has made “making a fool of yourself” a very successful brand.
But now, Barber is getting called out for making a fool of herself in the worst way possible, totally missing the mark when she made light of Emily Ratajkowski’s claims of sexual assault in a horribly misogynistic post.
In a post that the comedian uploaded yesterday, Barber recreated a video of Ratajkowski in a bikini leaning against a wall and posing during a photoshoot. While the video recreation itself wasn’t too offensive, it was the caption that raised eyebrows for how insensitive it was given the model recently came out with sexual assault allegations against Robin Thicke.
“We are sick of you objectifying our bodies! Also, here’s my ass,” Barber captioned the video.
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Barber was immediately called out for her extremely misogynistic caption and for how insensitive it was, not only to Ratajkowski, but to sex workers.
Just last month, Ratajkowski accused singer Robin Thicke of repeatedly groping her on the set of the ‘Blurred Lines’ video shoot in 2013. In her new book, My Body, Ratajkowski detailed her experience of feeling the “coolness and foreignness of a stranger’s hands cupping my bare breasts from behind” noting that she didn’t react at the time despite “feeling the heat of humiliation pump through” her body.
Prior to this revelation, Ratajkowski made waves last September when she penned a personal essay about the objectification of women and her experience with her image being used without her consent for The Cut.
In ‘Buying Myself Back’, Ratajkowski dissected the messy nature of the digital era that blurs the lines of ownership of one’s own body. For Ratajkowski, this was most evident in Richard Prince’s ‘Instagram Paintings’ collection where the artist sold screenshots of young, almost-nude women — including Ratajkowski herself — from Instagram for thousands of dollars.
As the essay title suggests, Ratajkowski bought the artwork of herself back and ended up selling the NFT of it online in an “ongoing effort to reclaim and control” her image.
“The digital terrain should be a place where women can share their likeness as they choose, controlling the usage of their image and receiving whatever potential capital attached,” Ratajkowski tweeted in April, explaining that she hoped the digital sale would “symbolically set a precedent for women and ownership online”.
And it’s this lack of understanding about the importance of women taking ownership of their own bodies that is exactly why Celeste Barber’s caption is such a disappointing and misogynistic misfire.
The digital terrain should be a place where women can share their likeness as they choose, controlling the usage of their image and receiving whatever potential capital attached. Instead, the internet has more frequently served as a space where others exploit and distribute image
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) April 23, 2021
Emily Ratajkowski choosing to upload a video of herself in a bikini is not objectification. And when women ask to stop being objectified by men and wider industries, that doesn’t mean they need to stop enjoying their own bodies or stop uploading photos of themselves wearing what they please.
Women are allowed to speak out against objectification and still be sexual, just as women can want to be sexual beings without wanting to be sexualised.
It’s also just a terribly misogynistic view to imply that women cannot be respected or speak out against sexual assault because they wear a bikini or show their ass online. That view is scarily familiar to the slut-shaming logic held by a lot of men that women are somehow “asking for it” based on the clothes they wear or the tone they use to speak to men.
Moreover, Barber’s caption also punches down on sex workers by implying that they cannot possibly be objectified because they show their bodies in their line of work.
Misogyny is still misogyny even if you’re the one making fun of women babes xx
— evelyn araluen (@evelynaraluen) November 2, 2021
All in all, it’s disappointing to see Celeste Barber — a woman who has genuinely done a lot of good for Australia — spout out such anti-feminist takes to her huge audience.