Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Ye, and the Repercussions for Black Fat Women
Kanye West's cyberbullying of Gabriella Karefa-Johnson is the latest example of how misogyny, racism, and fatphobia intertwine to create the perfect opportunity for online harassment.
Author’s note: this article is based on a research paper I wrote for my Introduction to Data in Social Context class at Virginia Tech. It has been edited for consistency and clarity.
When American rapper and entrepreneur Kanye West, who goes by “Ye,” debuted his latest Yeezy collection during Paris Fashion Week, most of the attendees thought Ye’s Fall 2022 collection would consist of sweatshirts, sweatpants, shoes, and galore. Then, the show began. The models, which included likes such as Bob Marley’s granddaughter, appeared stoic as they walked down the runway wearing black hoodies repping the phrase “White Lives Matter.” Immediately after the show, Vogue fashion editor and attendee Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who is a black fat woman, criticized the optics of Ye’s collection. Karefa-Johnson wrote on her Instagram stories, “He was trying to illustrate a dystopian world in the future when whiteness might become extinct or at least would be in enough danger to demand defense… but the danger is that this very premise, the idea that white supremacy is in danger of extinction.” Ye immediately resorted to mocking Karefa-Johnson’s appearance; he posted a photo of her on his Instagram page – which boasts approximately 18.4 million followers – with the caption, “This is not a fashion person,” and made fun of the shoes Karefa-Johnson wore during Paris Fashion Week. While Ye’s cyberbullying of the fashion editor immediately received backlash, that is merely the tip of the iceberg for black fat women on the internet. Kanye West’s cyberbullying of Vogue fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johson is the latest example of how misogyny, racism, and fatphobia intertwine to create the perfect opportunity for online harassment.
During the Black Lives Matter movement, which calls attention to police brutality against black people of color, the phrase “White Lives Matter” was used as a racist, white supremacist retort against the social justice initiative. The Southern Poverty Law Center traces the term’s roots to “two white supremacists and the Texas-based Aryan Renaissance Society, a neo-Nazi group.” The co-founder of the White Lives Matter movement, Rebecca Barnette, claimed that “What happens to blacks in this country at the hand of law enforcement is none of our concern… other than to prepare to restore order and rebuild our neighborhoods taking back our lands one community at a time. When the enemy destroys… we guard our town borders and make our homes white and great again.” Doug Chesim, the president of the Aryan Renaissance Society, described the movement as stemming “the rising tide of color and acts of violence upon our people” and being about taking “back our communities.”
Ye’s fashion collection was founded in December 2013 after Ye signed a 4 million dollar deal with the brand Adidas. Ye debuted his Yeezy collection on February 12, 2015, which sold out almost immediately. Around the same period, Vogue fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson was riding high at the famed magazine. She worked with fashion brands like Calvin Klein and Stuart Weitzman and became the first black woman to style a Vogue cover.
Many years later, Karefa-Johnson attended Ye’s Paris Fashion Week show in October 2022, where he debuted his newest Yeezy collection. The collection featured models wearing black hoodies with the phrase “White Lives Matter” on the back. One of the attendees, conservative commentator Candace Owens, wore a white version of the hoodie.
According to Vanity Fair, “the reaction was swift: Jaden Smith walked out. British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful called the shirt ‘insensitive, given the state of the world.’ The New York Times review of the show said ‘there is no excuse’ for the shirt.”
Karefa-Johnson wrote on her Instagram stories, “I’m fuming… collecting my thoughts… dm [sic] me for my working thesis. Indefensible behavior.” She went on to write:
It’s become clear that some viewers think my previous post containing my working, evolving thoughts on Kanye’s show, was some sort of distorted justification for the incredibly irresponsible and dangerous act of sending “W*** [sic] Lives Matter” T-shirt’s down the runway.
Please understand: it wasn’t. [The t-shirts] this man conceived, produced, and shared with the world are pure violence.
There is no excuse, there is no art here. I’m sorry I failed to make that clear – I thought I did. I do think if you asked Kanye, he’d say there was art, and revolution, and all of the things in that t-shirt.
There isn’t.
Unsurprisingly, Ye took issue with a black woman’s criticism compared to male attendees like Smith and Enninful. Vanity Fair writes, “It’s no surprise that West… would get prickly over criticism, but he went on to single out Karefa-Johnson on his own Instagram by posting a photograph of the stylist, churlishly announcing, ‘This is not a fashion person’ and mocking Karefa-Johnson’s shoes,” in addition to posting a screenshot of Karefa-Johnson’s Instagram account.
The backlash to Ye’s cyberbullying was immediate: models like Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid, and prominent fat model Tess Holiday condemned the Instagram posts. Hadid, in particular, commented under one of Ye’s posts, “You wish u [sic] had a percentage of her intellect. You have no idea haha… As if the ‘honor’ of being invited to your show should keep someone from giving their opinion…? Lol. You’re a bully and a joke.” Former editor-in-chief of the website Fashionista Tyler McCall and fashion writer Evan Ross Katz also chimed in:
Vogue rallied to Karefa-Johnson’s defense through a statement on Instagram.
As Ye was held accountable for both his present and future comments, Karefa-Johnson went back to work. Her byline was on two pieces for Vogue after the incident. Nonetheless, Ye’s harassment took effect; in the days following Ye’s online campaign, Karefa-Johnson had her Instagram comments restricted to only the users she followed (she has since opened her comments).
Ask any black person of color on social media, and he, she, or they will tell you that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. are rooted in racism. According to the American Psychological Association, an average of 67% of adolescents of color have experienced discrimination online. In addition to severe forms of discrimination, black users of color are also susceptible to microaggressions.
Perhaps, Karefa-Johnson would not have received Instagram’s widespread support if it wasn’t for the general population’s fascination with social media and celebrity gossip. Delia Cai writes for Vanity Fair:
For anyone attempting to keep up with the whole debacle, it required a good deal of toggling back and forth on Instagram accounts over several days, not to mention a knack for catching all the said posts, Stories, and comments before they expired, or were deleted. Amid the dramatics, I found myself thinking about the singularly critical role that this one platform has played in facilitating and documenting both the connections and clashes… between celebrities and everyone else. Perhaps [Instagram head executive Adam Mosseri] would rest a little easier about Instagram’s ongoing existential crisis and quit pining after TikTok (and BeReal) if he could only understand that this is Instagram’s true value: We’re not here for mediocre 30-second Reels. We’re here for the (in this case, truly alarming) way one app can so flatly democratize public and personal relations into shareable, screenshot-able content pile-on.
Why was this the line Ye crossed after a public history of misogyny? From the 2010s, when he infamously disparaged Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards, to the 2020s, when he frequently harasses his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend, comedian Pete Davidson, online, Ye’s entire career has been defined by misogyny. It seemed that finally, the internet was done with Ye’s cyberbullying after he targeted Karefa-Johnson. Karefa-Johnson is a “success story in the [fashion] industry.” Essence writes, “In retrospect, her success is necessary for an industry where Black curators have often silenced their goals and dreams for what’s available.” Suddenly, a black fat woman is successful enough to deserve better treatment.
Sesali Bowen writes about this phenomenon of society’s curiosity about “successful” or “confident” black fat women in the essay “Five-Star Bitch” for her book Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist. “People call me confident when they think I look good, seem happy, or sound smart, but they’ve internalized those qualities as contradictions to my fatness and blackness,” she writes. Bowen’s personal experience parallels to Karefa-Johnson’s professional experience. For the latter black fat woman, it wasn’t about Ye using his platform to attack a black fat woman; Ye used his platform to attack the successful Vogue fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson.
Bowen calls this ideology of ‘black fat women need to earn basic respect’ out in her book. She writes:
Too many people are made to feel like they somehow haven't earned the right to be okay with themselves. If you're one of those people, I'm here to tell you that you have. You have permission to be satisfied with who you are, what you look like, and what you have. You also have permission to take your time, and as many times as it takes, to figure it out according to the changing circumstances in your life.
Black fat women shouldn’t be “successful” or “confident” to deserve the basic humanity white standard-sized women automatically receive. Even if Sesali Bowen was insecure or Gabriella Karefa-Johnson was a flop, they still deserve decency and respect. This particular incident is the latest in the saga of online harassment against black fat women, but it certainly won’t be the last.