There’s one site that exists in the underbelly of the internet that calls itself a “sports” site, but it seems to be a site where “meninist” dude bros and trolls love to converge to bash women. But the site, Barstool, picked the wrong one this time.
Earlier this week, the site posted a photo and article about Rihanna and decided to poke fun at her recent weight gain, because that’s a sport, of course.
The post was titled “Is Rihanna Going to Make Being Fat the Hot New Trend?” and it was written by Chris “Spags” Spagnuolo. In the post, he wondered whether the paparazzi photos were just bad angles or if Rihanna had been “enjoying that good room service a bit too long,” or maybe she was pregnant. Yup, that’s definitely not a sports article. According to Spagnuolo, Rihanna looked to be pushing 180 pounds:
So you see her pushing 180 and it’s a tough world to stomach. With all the fat acceptance and “love me as I am” crowd, there’s definitely a world where I could see chicks see Rihanna make some strong “I don’t give a fuck I just love pizza” quote that goes viral and bam we’re in a world where all the hottest girls look like the humans in Wall-E. And just in time for summer too. A world of ladies shaped like the Hindenburg loaded into one-piece bathing suits may be on the horizon now that Rihanna is traipsing around out there looking like she’s in a sumo suit.
The backlash was swift, and the site received its fair share of “WTF” tweets:
Of course the writer of the post cried that he was now being cyberbullied:
Eventually the site’s founder, Dave Portnoy, issued a statement about the post and deleted it. Portnoy didn’t think the blog was “as bad as many are making it out to be” and that “lots of feminists [were] not happy about it.”
Of course the commenters on the site took issue with the deletion of the post:
But there were others who didn’t actually think highly of the writer, which is astounding because most of the writers on the site seem to work from the same brain. In any event, I guess dude bros need a site where they can go and complain about women and Wiffle ball, too.
