Actress Olivia Munn posted an essay to Twitter Thursday in which she criticized the fashion blog Go Fug Yourself for what she called their “Ugly Behavior” by posting critical opinions about some of the actress’s recent fashion choices.
Much of the reaction sided with the blog and not Munn. And it’s raised some fascinating questions about whether or not snarky criticism of celebrity fashion is out of bounds, and whether it’s wrong for a celebrity with a huge social media following to punch down at a fashion blog.
“For years, fashion-policing celebrity has been an accepted form of media critique, even though it focuses on women not men,” Munn wrote. She went on to rip Go Fug Yourself as having “anointed themselves the judge and jury of what’s fashionable.”
Specifically, Munn criticized the website for posting negatively about the outfit she wore while she was accepting an award from a children’s charity with which she’s associated, and she illustrated the post with a picture of herself next to the creators of the Go Fug Yourself website, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan.
Much of the reaction to the post was in opposition to Munn’s post.
“I am deeply bothered by your effort to compare GFY to teen boys’ objectification of and entitlement to teenage female bodies,” pop culture writer Courtney Enlow, who acknowledged she is a fan of Munn’s, said in the replies . “One is fashion criticism. One is rape culture. Think better of this.”
“This reads like you overheard a conversation about feminism once, several years ago, and are now employing your cherry picked recollections in the most bad faith and self serving ways possible,” pop culture and TV writer Erin Gloria Ryan tweeted in reply to Munn.
Enlow and others noted that the Go Fug Yourself site has traditionally avoided body-shaming and denunciation of people’s looks, while instead keeping the critique focused on fashion.
Not all of the reaction was negative. Former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien wrote “good for Olivia Munn.”
Go Fug Yourself was founded in the early aughts and was named one of the 50 most powerful blogs in the world by The Guardian in 2008. They do not appear to have responded to Munn’s essay as of Thursday afternoon.
Munn hosted Attack of the Show! on the old G4 network and has since appeared in such films as X-Men: Apocalypse and Magic Mike. She was also a regular on the TV series The Newsroom .