If you’ve been on Twitter at all over the past couple of days, you probably noticed that “Cardi B” or “Cardi B’s nipples” were a trending topic. All of the chatter was triggered after the Bronx rapper uploaded a topless photo to her Instagram stories. Cardi quickly removed the image and later explained that she posted it by accident, adding that she had actually intended to send it to her estranged husband, Offset.
Source: WENN/Avalon / WENN
“I’m telling Offset, ‘Yo, I feel like my top lip looks swollen and he’s like, ‘No, I don’t think it looks swollen.’ Cause I hit myself under here and it f-cking it got like a little swoll. So I’m like, ‘On camera, it looks swoll. Let me show you.’ So I’m taking the f-cking picture! B-tch…I’m taking the f*cking picture, right,” she later explained via Instagram, “and I f-cking press and I’m seeing that it’s loading and I’m like ‘Oh my God, Oh my God, Offset! Oh my god, the picture’s loading.’ And he’s like, ‘What what what?!’ And I turn off the phone because I see that it’s going…you know when you post something and your story starts [loading]? So I turn off my f-cking phone so it won’t load. And I’m like ‘Yo [Offsett] check it the f-cking picture posted’ and he’s like ‘Yo, you posted a picture of the f-cking t-t.’ By the time I f-cking turned my phone on and f-cking deleted the sh-t, everybody and they mom saw my big a– salami nipple t-tties.”
Of course, any time a nude image of a celebrity hits the internet, people are going to talk. However, things took a highly problematic turn when men began to criticize the appearance of Cardi’s areolas. The commentary included men referring to the “WAP” rapper areolas as “weird and “too big” as well as creating memes that poke fun at their size and appearance. The most problematic comments of them all, however, came from men who blamed Offset’s repeated infidelity on the appearance of Cardi’s breasts.
The response is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, the tweets make it painfully obvious that many of these guys have no idea what a woman’s body looks like aside from the ones they see in adult films, further perpetuating narrow and unrealistic expectations about women’s bodies. Secondly, to blame the appearance of a woman’s body for her husband’s decision to violate their marital vows is ignorant and problematic as hell.
Cardi, however, hasn’t allowed the commentary to bother her too much.
