Met Gala criticism: "liberal hypocrisy to celebrate 'known bigot' Karl Lagerfeld"

British actress Jameela Jamil took to social media to share her outrage over the celebration at the “highest level” of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld at the 2023 Met Gala.

Despite the designer’s controversy, the event was attended by almost all the A-list celebrities, who spoke of him reverently and were tasked with wearing fashion “in honor of Karl.”

“Last night Hollywood and fashion said the quiet part out loud when a lot of famous feminists chose to celebrate at the highest level a man who was so publicly cruel to women, to fat people, to immigrants, and to sexual assault survivors,” said Jamil in an Instagram post.

The designer, who died in 2019, famously called critics of too-skinny models: "fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly" - as cited in the magazine 'Brigitte'. He also said that plus-sized women shouldn’t be models: “No one wants to see curvy women.”

Lagerfeld infamously told Vogue: "Life is not a beauty contest, some ugly people are great. What I hate is nasty, ugly people. The worst is ugly short men. Women can be short, but for men it is impossible. It is something that they will not forgive in life — they are mean and they want to kill you."

During a 2017 talk show, Lagerfeld said Germany’s acceptance of Muslim refugees from the Syrian civil war was an “insult” to Jewish Holocaust victims. Earlier, in 1994, Chanel apologized after one of Lagerfeld's dresses had verses from the Qur’an on it.

The German designer also criticized entire nationalities, saying Russian men were “ugly” and that Greeks and Italians had “disgusting habits.”

When the #MeToo movement came for some in the fashion industry, Lagerfeld said if women didn’t want to be in situations they found traumatic, they should become nuns instead.

Despite all this, Karl Lagerfeld was celebrated at the 2023 Met Gala as a great mind. The theme of the event was: 'Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.'

Amid the debate about Lagerfeld, which started even before Jamil’s post, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and co-chair of the gala had given her statement to BBC News. She said it was a night to celebrate Lagerfeld’s body of work, not the man.

The ‘Good Place’ actress slammed the stars, organizers, and audience for “gleefully” ignoring Lagerfeld’s darker legacy. “Nobody has perfect morals, least of all me but… we had a year to course correct here and not award the highest honor possible to a known bigot.”

Jamil was fuming about the double standard in today's "selective cancel culture," where often stars are rejected because of disrespectful behavior, while others are continued to be praised. "It’s one rule for us, and another rule for everybody else."

The actress went on to say that this isn’t only about Lagerfeld, but about “showing how selective cancel culture is within liberal politics, in the most blatant way so far."

She argued that no one would listen to liberals in Hollywood if they didn't have a consistent argument. With the 'hypocrisy' at the Met gala, Jamil said, "We relinquished our right to be taken at all seriously about anything important.”

The actress continued: “It’s about showing why people don’t trust liberals. Because of slippery tactics and double standards like this.” She lamented that “If we carry on like this, don’t be shocked when we lose the next election.”

She said the hypocrisy goes beyond the celebs and the media. “The general public online participated and were entirely complicit in the erasure of the truth last night. They replaced their pitchforks with spoons… to lap that $**t right up.”

The actress has spoken out before about the injustices she perceived in Hollywood. After the Oscars, the ‘Good Place’ actress called out what she saw as “extreme” and unstainable weight loss on the red carpet.

She criticized the industry pressure for crash diets and weight loss injections and “the images of ageless, weightless women” as “tools of oppression.”

Given that Lagerfeld, who died in 2019, was famously disrespectful toward plus-sized women, some who attended the Gala tried to subvert the designer. Lizzo, for example, posed eating fries.

Even so, some fans still criticized her for participating at all.

Image: @lizzobeeating / Instagram

The LA singer Lana del Rey was also conspicuously absent from the Met Gala this year. Lagerfeld had famously said she was “a little too fat.”