Jameela Jamil slams Met Gala for honouring ‘known bigot’

Jameela Jamil has blasted the Met Gala for its ‘double standards’. Picture: Reuters

Jameela Jamil has blasted the Met Gala for its ‘double standards’. Picture: Reuters

Published May 4, 2023

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Jameela Jamil has blasted the Met Gala's double standards in honouring a “known bigot”.

The “Good Place” actress slammed the “selective cancel culture” shown by organisers and guests at the annual Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit, which took place on Monday and had the theme “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”.

The 37-year-old star blasted the fact people had opted to “gleefully ignore” some of the late designer's “cruel” opinions while still calling for the cancellation of others whose views they didn’t agree with.

She wrote on Instagram: “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.

“And all the women's publications, and spectators online, chose to gleefully ignore it.

“Nobody has perfect morals, least of all me, but … we had a year to course correct here, and not award the highest honour possible to a known bigot … and everyone just decided all of a sudden we can separate the art from the artist when *convenient*.

“And 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.”

Jamil used the caption of her post to highlight “slippery tactics and double standards” and warned that people should reflect on her points ahead of the next presidential election.

She wrote: “This isn’t about cancel culture. It’s not even about Karl. 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.

“And it’s not just Hollywood here, the general public online participated and were entirely complicit in the erasure of the truth last night. They replaced their pitchforks with spoons last night, to lap that shit right up … If we carry on like this, don’t be shocked when we lose the next election.”

This isn't the first time the “Bad Dates” podcast host has slammed the decision to honour Lagerfeld, who died in February 2019, at the Met Gala.

After the theme was announced, she shared a series of screenshots highlighting the designer's controversial previous comments.

She captioned her post: “Why is THIS who we celebrate when there are so many AMAZING designers out there who aren’t bigoted white men? What happened to everyone’s principles and ‘advocacy’. You don’t get to stand for justice in these areas, and then attend the celebration of someone who revelled in his own public disdain for marginalised people.

“Sorry, but no. This isn’t the 90s. We didn’t fight all this s*** just to throw it all away because some white guy made some pretty clothes for people’s skinny faves … come on now.”

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