On Instagram, “The Good Place” alum called out Hollywood liberals and “famous feminists” for practicing “selective cancel culture” by participating in Monday’s Met Gala theme celebrating the controversial German designer. Lagerfeld died in February 2019 at age 85.
“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,” Jamil wrote.
“And all the women’s publications, and spectators online, chose to gleefully ignore it. Suddenly your appetite to find someone’s tweets from when they were 12, has gone.”
The fashion event’s posthumous honoree, Lagerfeld, made several offensive statements throughout his career. For example, the designer once told Numéro magazine he was “fed up” with the #MeToo movement while deeming models who spoke out about abuse “stupid,” “toxic” and “sordid creatures.”
In a 2009 interview with Focus magazine, he dismissed body-inclusivity advocates as “fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly” and added that “no one wants to see curvy women.” He also made disparaging and xenophobic remarks about immigrants on the French talk show “Salut les Terriens!” in 2017.
“Nobody has perfect morals, least of all me, but Jesus Christ we had a year to course correct here, and not award the highest honor possible to a known bigot… and everyone just decided all of a sudden we can separate the art from the artist when *convenient*,” Jamil continued.
“It’s one rule for us, and another rule for everybody else. Last night we relinquished our right to be taken at all seriously about anything important.”
On Monday, a number of demonstrators surrounded the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to protest the Lagerfeld-inspired event. During the demonstration, Model Alliance founder Sara Ziff recalled modeling for Lagerfield “regularly” and decried the designer’s “problematic attitude toward women who didn’t fit his harmful and outdated standards.”
Inside the event, countless models, actors, musicians, influencers and other prominent figures dressed in black-and-white formal attire while paying homage to the late creative director of Chanel.
In the comments section under Jamil’s post, some pointed out that certain Met Gala attendees’ presence at the event could be interpreted as a form of resistance.
Body-positivity icon Lizzo, for instance, proudly showed off her curves in an elegant, pearl-encrusted gown and shared a photo of herself enjoying some French fries after the show. And trailblazing plus-size model Ashley Graham graced the carpet in a hip-hugging black-and-pink number. (Lagerfeld famously disapproved of people wearing pink.)
“This isn’t about cancel culture. Its not even about Karl,” Jamil clarified in the caption of her post.
“It’s about showing how selective cancel culture is within liberal politics, in the most blatant way so far. It’s about showing why people don’t trust liberals. Because of slippery tactics and double standards like this.”
This isn’t the first time Jamil has condemned the 2023 Met Gala theme. Shortly after details about the event were announced last year, the actor and activist shared various Lagerfeld quotes while denouncing the designer’s “racism, fat phobia and … hatred of the Me Too movement.”
“It’s not just Hollywood here, the general public online participated and were entirely complicit in the erasure of the truth last night,” Jamil concluded her statement.
“They replaced their pitchforks with spoons last night, to lap that s— right up…”