The Charli D’Amelio Personal Chef Controversy: Everything You Need to Know
Charli D’Amelio is one of the biggest TikTok stars in the world. The 16-year-old currently has over 98 million (yes, million!) followers on the platform and has now started to become a bit of a household name, even for those of us well older than Gen Z. Her older sister Dixie, 19, is also hella famous at the moment with over 43 million TikTok followers.
But the two are currently losing followers like crazy (500,000 and counting, according to BuzzFeed) after their family, including their parents, launched a YouTube show called Dinner With the D’Amelios.
So what exactly is going on here? Let’s break down this cross-platform controversy.
The video
The D’Amelio sisters and their parents recently premiered a new series on their family’s YouTube channel called Dinner With the D’Amelios, where they will be inviting a mystery guest to join each episode and film a (supposed to be) fun dinner party.
In the premiere, said guest is James Charles, another huge internet star and a friend of Charli and Dixie’s. Sounds harmless enough, right? But if you watch for yourself, you will see what many think is Charli D’Amelio and Dixie behaving quite rudely to their personal chef, Aaron May, who’s serving them dinner. They make faces as he describes the food, made vomit noises, and Dixie even throws up after eating snail in one of the dishes. At one point, Charli asks for Dino Nuggets instead.
The backlash
Soon after the video was published (it currently has over 8 million views), the comments got brutal. Here’s a sampling:
“Sorry, being a spoiled brat is not a sense of humor.”
“Omg this is so cringey to watch, the way they disrespected the Chef. The over dramatically throwing up while everyone is sitting a few ft away eating, money and views definitely can’t buy class. These lil girls are brats.”
“charli: poking at her food pretending to eat it ‘do we have any dino nuggets?’ SRSLY. the disrespect and the lack of manners wow.”
“You can tell James was uncomfortable with how they acted in front of the chef, even he has more class than these tiktok influencers.”
“This is just sooo rude, the parents could’ve do anything about it not just wow, they let their children do whatever they want, James deserves the 100M, because he was polite he has manners and he’s so respectful to that chef. The chef deserves better. I hate the Damelios now.”
The repercussions
BuzzFeed reports that Charli is down over 500,000 followers and counting. While that is kind of a drop in the bucket when you’re at almost 100 million, her reputation is definitely taking a hit. It remains to be seen if the effects will be long-lasting or if it will cause damage to her many big brand and sponsorship deals.
Charli D’Amelio has not issued a public response, but Dixie has. She posted a video to her TikTok with the caption, “Anyways, not posting this for any other reason than to share the truth of something that was ridiculously blown out of proportion.…” She then goes on to explain that the family has a good relationship with the chef, that things were taken out of context, and how she just throws up really easily.
We’ll update this post with more information as it comes in.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
