Paloma Elsesser by Pablo di Prima for D Repubblica Magazine May 2023

The Price of Being 'First' I made modeling history. Then the internet made me wish I hadn't. By Paloma Elsesser

The reality hit me the next morning on my way to the airport. The hate had sprawled across thousands of comments on TikTok, Instagram, and X, tearing apart my body, my face, my walk. People were having full-blown conversations in the comments sections of my own posts. Comments like “She’s a diversity pick” and “Real models work so hard to have the bodies that they have. You get to just sit around eating cheeseburgers” flooded my phone, and the onslaught of negativity didn’t come just from faceless trolls. In a TikTok that was liked 219,000 times, Kanye West fueled the fire, alleging I was part of a vast conspiracy to “push obesity to us.” This narrative has long followed me and many in the public eye whose bodies aren’t thin. Yet over the last few years, fatphobia has become acceptable again. Representation in media has become less alluring to folks, and its purpose is being reduced to “woke ideology.”

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Go where the love is

📸: @abelr

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