She gets the last laugh and is making waves.
Influencer and model Remi Bader took a break from oversharing online due to internet trolls after undergoing weight loss surgery in 2023 that was considered “controversial” among her fans.
Now she’s Vogue wearing a red thong swimsuit, boasting her fresh-faced look that first appeared in May’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, her tanned skin glowing on a Montauk beach at sunset.
In this issue, she also wears a little blue bikini and a beige knit crop top.
“I was scared for a long time on my weight loss journey,” Bader, 31, told Page Six ahead of SI Swim’s highly anticipated May issue gala held last Thursday at the Hard Rock Hotel in Times Square.
Bader told Page Six that she’s happy to be back online after taking time off to silence her haters and look after herself before resuming her public persona.
“There have been many times where I’ve taken a week-long mental health break. I love my platform and the community I’ve built. I still do (post and share) because I love it,” she said, but added, “A lot of people end up behind the scenes because of the scrutiny.”
“People are almost forced into hiding based on how they’re perceived by others online. That’s absolutely not okay.”
Bader rose to internet fame during the pandemic by trying on clothes from brands like Zara and Anthropologie and teasing how the trending silhouettes fit her plus-size body.
In 2020, when her stardom began to rise, she was also prescribed the off-label drug semaglutide for bulimia. Bader spoke candidly about her treatment journey with her followers, seeing a therapist and psychiatrist who specializes in eating disorders.
She entered a six-week outpatient eating disorder treatment program in 2022 and invited her followers to join her on her journey.
But once the program ended, her bulimia returned “almost immediately,” she previously told Self magazine.
Off camera, she was having a hard time. By September of that year, she was “secretly” taking Munjaro, another GLP-1 drug, for weight loss and switched to two other drugs, including Ozempic.
As her weight fluctuated, she also quietly battled insults from online trolls.
In September 2023, she tearfully implored “nasty” trolls on TikTok to stop the “ridiculous…body shaming” surrounding her weight, vowing to stop talking about her weight and health online from now on.
“From now on, my health journey is my business,” Bader told her millions of followers on TikTok. “It’s really unfair to only see things that are really mean and mean. I’m taking care of myself as best I can.”
Bader has decided to undergo weight-loss surgery by the fall of 2023, but he didn’t talk about it until last March when he revealed his plans for weight-loss surgery to treat obesity in an interview with Self magazine. The surgery involved “removing 80 percent of my stomach after years of battling bulimia.”
Bader says her experiences leading up to this experience have made her reevaluate how much she wants to share about her body online, or whether she wants to share it at all.
“Even if I wanted to be, or tried to be, a little bit of this closed book, that’s not who I am,” Bader told Page Six about finding the courage to get real about her health journey again.
It wasn’t exactly a good landing. After the personal revelation, some social media users claimed that some of Vader’s fans were “waiting for a payoff” before going public with her story, leaving some fans feeling betrayed.
“She blocked so many people who asked this in the comments for months,” one individual commented on Page Six TikTok last March while showing an interview on Vader’s podcast “Chloe in Wonderland.”
But on the bright side these days, she has no problem being upfront about dating. But she says it’s weird that people ask her about the details she explained when they met her IRL.
“When I meet people at the airport or on the street, they ask me, ‘How was your date last night?’
“I’m on a dating journey right now. I just started again…I’ve been on a few dates and I notice when someone thinks what I’m doing is cool. I’ve brought up on a few dates that I talk about dating publicly (as an influencer), but I never say your name.”
Bader also said her fans encourage her and give her advice about dating.
“I wanted to cancel a date the other day, but my followers told me it wasn’t cancelled, I had to go. Let’s see how this goes.”
“I changed my dating profile to not say I’m an influencer. I don’t say that unless I meet someone in person.”
