She’s getting the last laugh — and making a splash.
Internet trolls made influencer and model Remi Bader step back from over-sharing online after she underwent what fans deemed “controversial” weight loss surgery in 2023.
Now, she’s voguing in a red thong bathing suit, embracing her figure as a rookie for her first appearance in May’s Sports Ilustrated Swimsuit Issue with sun-kissed skin glistening on a beach at sunset in Montauk.
In the issue she also sports a teeny blue bikini and a beige knitted crop top.
“With my weight loss journey, I was scared for so long,” Bader, 31, told Page Six ahead of the celebration for SI Swim’s coveted May issue last Thursday at the Hard Rock Hotel in Times Square.
Bader told Page Six, she’s glad to be back online after taking time off to silence her haters and look after herself before resuming her public persona.
“There’s so many times when I’ve given myself mental health breaks for a week. I love my platform and my community that I built. I [post and share] because I still love it,” she said, although she added: “A lot of people, because of scrutiny, end up being behind the scenes.
“People are almost forced into hiding based on how people are to other people online. It’s definitely not okay.”
Bader rose to internet fame during the pandemic for trying on clothes from brands like Zara and Anthropologie and making fun of how the on-trend silhouettes fit on her plus-sized body.
She was also prescribed an off-label semaglutide medication for her binge eating in 2020 as her star began to rise. Bader was candid about her treatment journey with followers, while seeing a therapist and psychiatrist who specialized in disordered eating.
She attended a six-week outpatient eating disorder treatment program in 2022, letting followers into her journey.
But after the program ended, her binges returned “almost immediately,” she prevoiusly told Self magazine.
Off camera, she was struggling. By September of that year, she “very secretly,” went on another GLP-1 drug for weightloss, Mounjaro and switched to two others, including Ozempic.
As her weight fluctuated, she also quietly battled insults from trolls online.
In September 2023, she tearfully took to TikTok pleading for “disgusting” trolls to stop their “ridiculous … body-shaming” over her weight vowing to stop talking about her weight and health online moving forward.
“My health journey will now be my business,” Bader told her millions of followers on TikTok. “It’s really not fair to just see really mean, mean things. I’m taking care of myself the best that I can.”
By the fall of 2023, Bader decided to get weight loss surgery which she didn’t talk about until last March in the Self magazine interview where she revealed her bariatric weight-loss procedure, which involved “cut[ting] out 80 percent of [her] stomach … after years of struggling with a binge-eating disorder.”
Bader says the experience leading up to it made her re-assess how much she wanted to share online about her body – or at all.
“As much as I wanted to be, or tried to be, for a little bit, this closed book it’s just not who I am,” Bader told Page Six about finding the courage to be real about her health journey again.
It didn’t exactly land well. After the personal reveal, some of Bader’s fans were left feeling betrayed with some social media users claiming she was “waiting to get paid,” before opening up about her story.
“She blocked SO many people who asked this in her comments for months,” one individual commented on a Page Six TikTok from last March, showing Bader’s “Khloé in Wonder Land” podcast interview.
However, on the upside these days she has no problem being candid about Dating. Though, she says, it’s weird when people ask her about the details she’s given out when they meet her IRL.
“I’ll see people at the airport or on the street and they’ll say, ‘how was your date last night?’
“I’m on a dating journey right now. I just restarted it … I have been dating a few different people and notice when someone thinks what I do is cool. I have brought up on some dates that [as an influencer] I talk about dating publicly, but I’ll never say your name.”
Bader also said her fans have been encouraging and advising her when it comes to going on dates.
“I wanted to cancel a date the other date and my followers were saying you’re not canceling you have to go. We’ll see how this ends up for me.
“On my dating profiles I’ve changed them so it doesn’t say I’m an influencer. I don’t say it unless I meet them in person.”
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