Can Bella Thorne please just live her life?!
Like, at this point, we know the drill: she likes to wear revealing outfits, and she enjoys sharing racy selfies on social media.
She’s an adult, she can make those kinds of decisions.
It is really not that big of a deal.
But the way people attack her and shame her for showing some cleavage or exposing a nipple, you’d think she was some kind of demonic she-beast from hell.
Instead of, you know, an absolutely gorgeous woman who’s been kind enough to let us look at her.
This is all coming up, by the way, because of an appearance Bella made at New York Fashion Week a couple of days ago.
She showed up wearing this ensemble:
A pink sweatsuit altered to show a healthy amount of underboob — classic Bella, right?
But while this is how she looked while posing for photos, paparazzi got some different shots, including a candid one of her pointing and talking to someone.
Her gestures made her shirt ride up, revealing a bit more of her body than she probably intended.
And, like the gem he is, Perez Hilton posted that particular photo to his Instagram page, inviting users to caption the photo and also tagging all of her famous exes.
That’s weird, right?
Seriously, he tagged Scott Disick, Charlie Puth, Gregg Sulkin, Black Bear, and even Disney, like they’re somehow relevant here.
And he’s been in the business long enough to know that by posting a photo like that and asking followers to caption it, he’s basically asking people to be awful.
Lots of people were awful — the comments on the photo are full of nasty, hateful remarks.
But thankfully, many people rose above that kind of thing and said that she looks beautiful and confident and plenty of other nice things.
The drama was far from over though.
Over on Twitter, one user asked a general question about that time that Perez “pledged to be kinder,” but instead continues to participate in body-shaming.
He responded with “Body shaming????”, apparently not knowing what this person was referring to.
She told him “You posted a picture of @bellathorne with a fill in the blank because you knew people would body and slut shame her. Same thing.”
He disagreed, but that’s when Bella herself stepped into the conversation.
“Honestly I don’t,” she wrote. “You know I love you p but I think it’s kinda rude to use the pic my shirt is riding up and I’m in the middle of talking.”
“Esp when there’s a lot of great photos,” she added. “Kinda seems like you want more people to pick on me. If I wasn’t sad enough about it already.”
She has a point, doesn’t she? Especially if she and Perez are friends, like they seem to be.
Bella also tweeted “And then you tag charlie and like other guys on my body trying to start drama and trying to make me feel disgusting.. like they own my body.”
Aww, Bella …
Perez explained that he tagged those guys “so the photo would come up in more searches,” and he said that it “didn’t occur to me you would interpret it that way. Sorry again.”
It was a half-assed apology, and plenty of people called him out on it.
His response to that?
“I’d do it again, tbh.”
“YOU WOULD DO IT AGAIN!?” Bella asked. “R u serious? Yeah you would like posting a photo of Ariel in a bikini to get views on a podcast?”
(Because also this week, Perez made an Instagram post promoting a new episode of his podcast, and he used a completely unrelated photo of Ariel Winter in a bikini as the image for the post.)
“I hope no one does this to your daughter,” she added.
Finally, Perez said “I’m tired of this convo, but I will give you one last tweet. HOW is saying ‘Fill in the blank! @BellaThorne _____” me making fun of her?”
And still, the fact remains that for as many years as he’s been doing this kind of thing, he knows good and well the kinds of things people would say about such a photo.
Besides, how hard would it be to just make a genuine apology after Bella made it clear how upset she was?
Again, can this girl just live?!
