Plus-Size Model Lesego Legobane Shuts Down Man Who Put Her in Sexist Meme
There's no single right way to respond to body-shamers online. You can ignore them, start a flame war with them or, if you're plus-size model Lesego Legobane, shut them down so directly they attempt to do a full 180 and act body-positive — which is exactly what happened earlier this week.
It all began when Twitter user Leyton Mokgerepi reportedly posted a side-by-side photo of Legobane and another model on Twitter with the caption, "Girls that I like vs Girls that like me," with the latter apparently referring to Legobane, despite the fact that she's slaying in the pic. (At the time of writing, his tweets are protected and only viewable to confirmed followers.) Not long after, Legobane decided that she couldn't let this sexist meme slide. She replied to Mokgerepi's tweet with just four words that perfectly shut down the body-shamer: "I don't like you."
The model and blogger's short yet powerful reply — which "might be the best clapback of 2017," according to one Twitter user — has already garnered more than 238,000 retweets and 768,000 likes. Ariana Grande, Ava Duvernay, and Nicki Minaj are just a few of the Twitter users to like it, according to BuzzFeed.
After receiving plenty of backlash for his messed-up meme, Mokgerepi apparently attempted to backtrack by posting the exact same picture of Legobane. This time, he added the caption "Girlfriend Goals 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥." Um, too little, too late, dude.
In an interview with BuzzFeed, Legobane said she responded to Mokgerepi because "he had to know his place. So I decided to reply because I felt he was being rude." She added, "I hate it when men think that fat girls are desperate and that we like every other guy 'cause 'we don't have options.' It's utter nonsense. I can be fat and still be out of your league." Legobane also said that she's been "overwhelmed by the love" she's received from total strangers on the Internet since the incident: "It means a lot to me that I can change someone's perception about their physical appearance by loving my own."
The other woman pictured in the meme also told BuzzFeed she was not impressed by Mokgerepi's tweet. "It was not a well thought-out compliment, if that is what he was trying achieve," Joëlle Kayembe said. "And to use one woman's picture (mine in this case) to body-shame another is just rude and unnecessary!" We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
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