Last week, Rebel Wilson incorrectly claimed to be the first plus-sized actress to star in a rom-com, and she keeps blocking people on Twitter who point out the Black actresses who came before her.
On the Ellen Degeneres Show on Halloween, Wilson said she was the “first-ever plus-sized girl to be the star of a romantic comedy.” People quickly took to Twitter to make sure that Wilson was aware of the works of Queen Latifah and Mo’Nique, two plus-sized Black women who starred in romantic comedies over a decade ago.
Wilson mostly didn’t interact with these critiques—though she did reply to one person saying she thought those movies were in a “grey area.”
https://twitter.com/RebelWilson/status/1058129473562804224
What Wilson appears to mostly be doing in response to these critiques is blocking people. She’s hit the block button on enough people that there’s even a hashtag, #RebelWilsonBlockedMe. A perusal of the hashtag shows what Wilson found offending enough to deserve a block—and her threshold doesn’t seem very high.
https://twitter.com/geekgirldiva/status/1059097733317877760
https://twitter.com/Nabela/status/1058568311439536128
https://twitter.com/aishacs/status/1058822686779101184
So many people were blocked by Wilson that one person made a thread of folks who had been blocked, saying they were all a part of the party. Several dozen people have been blocked, many of them Twitter-verified Black people and plus-sized people in the entertainment industry.
https://twitter.com/IWriteAllDay_/status/1059122105915080704
Ha ha! We serving mimosas at the #RebelWilsonBlockedMe meeting this morning? pic.twitter.com/xgXekYNUVD
— FilmFatale_NYC 🇭🇹 🇩🇴 🇺🇸 (@FilmFatale_NYC) November 4, 2018
Some people even jokingly talked about the #RebelWilsonBlockedMe hashtag as if it was a club or networking event for Black Twitter.
Going through the #RebelWilsonBlockedMe list has led me to discover at least a couple dozen great accounts to start following. https://t.co/57JEv6Qafh
— Sam (she/her) 🐀 (@SamForHumans) November 5, 2018
Rebel Wilson’s block list is the closest we’re ever going to get to an official roster for black Twitter
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) November 5, 2018
Wilson did respond to Mo’Nique when she directly reached out, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped her from blocking people for saying exactly what Mo’Nique is saying.
https://twitter.com/RebelWilson/status/1058834882665664513
All jokes aside, Wilson’s erasure is damaging and blocking plus-sized women of color for pointing that out only makes it worse. Film critic ReBecca Theodore-Vachon summed up the deeper problem of Wilson’s claim and behavior succinctly, saying, “Black women’s bodies don’t matter when it comes to White women like Rebel Wilson. They will always value their representation more while erasing ours.”
…but really it comes down to this – Black women’s bodies don’t matter when it comes to White women like Rebel Wilson. They will always value their representation more while erasing ours. She and that movie… pic.twitter.com/1qbno2zgjW
— FilmFatale_NYC 🇭🇹 🇩🇴 🇺🇸 (@FilmFatale_NYC) November 2, 2018