Remi Bader shut down unfounded theories that her relationship is fake.
The fashion influencer, 28, slammed trolls for suggesting that her boyfriend is using her during Tuesday’s interview on Emily Ratajkowski’s “High Low with EmRata” podcast.
“What really hurts me is seeing the things when I post with my boyfriend, and I love posting videos with him and it’s fun and we post funny things together,” Bader shared.
“And then people are just like, ‘clearly he’s being paid to be with her,’ like, ‘there’s no way such a good looking guy would be with a girl like that’ … ‘He has to be using her.'”
She added, “Whatever it is, that can’t not get to someone.”
The TikTok star admitted that it’s been “hard” for her and her boyfriend — whose name she has not revealed — because they both see the mean comments she receives about their relationship.
However, the plus-size model explained that her boyfriend has been “the most supportive” person throughout all of her struggles.
“He’s been the one that’s told me, ‘I don’t want you to lose weight in ways that are making you feel bad about yourself,’ like, ‘I love you the way you are,'” she said.
“So when I see people saying the opposite, or make me feel like there’s no way he could love me, and like, see these things, like, when people say ‘just don’t read it,’ I’m like, you don’t get it.”
Bader said that her boyfriend “kind of knew” what he was getting himself into when they started dating as her influencer career continued to grow, but that all the negative comments are “hurting him too.”
“I’m trying to just focus on us and we do have a really great relationship,” Bader said. “We just have fun and we’re funny together.”
Bader also said that she never expected to find love while she was dealing with her binge-eating disorder and mental health struggles.
“To have a boyfriend while dealing with all this is hard, but I realized, how long was I gonna wait? Was I gonna wait forever to get to a point to where I felt perfect? That’s never gonna happen.”
Bader and her beau met on the Lox Club dating app after she didn’t get accepted on Raya.
“We literally started talking. I was like, ‘Oh this will never be a real thing,'” Bader shared. “And I think that was an insecurity of my own, too. Like, there’s this good-looking guy and there’s just no way.”
“It was sad on my part thinking that,” she said, adding that she had “never had something real” and always “just had flings.”
“So that was something that was baked into my mind,” Bader said.
But the style expert explained that her boyfriend was persistent and she fell for him after their second date.
“Then we never stopped talking, like for one day,” Bader recalled, adding that they’ve been together for just over a year now.
Bader also dished on why she decided to keep her boyfriend’s name off her social account.
“once we started getting serious I started asking other friends in the industry how they’ve dealt with their relationships,” she said, explaining that many content creators had negative experiences.
“Things started scaring me and I was like, I need to protect this in some way because I’m so open that maybe I just won’t tag him,” she said. “I’m not saying that’s a forever thing, but I think it’s because I share so much that I was like, I need to protect something.”
As for how her boyfriend feels about his identity being withheld from the public, Bader says he’s “fine” with it and regularly checks in on him.
“He always says, ‘I don’t care.’ He also is not in this world,” Bader said. “Like, people try saying, ‘Oh he’s using her,’ but like, he literally does finance.”
“At this point, it’s been over a year … I think if he wanted out and was just trying to get something from it, he would’ve already,” she said.
Bader, who broke down earlier this month over bullying comments about her fluctuating weight, took her relationship public in November 2022.
She celebrated their one-year anniversary with a sweet PDA-packed video shared to her Instagram earlier this month.
“ONE YEAR WITH YOU!!!!!! And what a year it’s been..A year may not be long for some people, but for a 28 year old gal who has her first boyfriend, it’s a very big deal to me,” she captioned the post.
The Revolve collaborator also used the opportunity to let her single followers know that love is possible.
“More importantly I’m posting this for my followers who have maybe been told once before…they will never find a significant other, who choose to put their career first, who might come off to men as ‘intimidating’, who think they’re too independent to ever have a partner enjoy life with, who is waiting until the day they lose enough weight or feel better about themselves in order to find love,” Bader wrote.
“I’ve learned this year that there is someone out there for everyone. Someone who finds all of the things you feel are negatives about yourself to be so amazing. I also think it’s important to share that there is also no timeline any of us need to follow. There is no rush, and whether you’re 27 or 67 and meet your first significant other, there is simply nothing wrong with that.”
She thanked her boyfriend for “making everyday so much more exciting.”
“You teach me to speak kinder to myself have shown me love that I never thought was something that was possible for me,” she wrote. “You bring out my childish goofy side and make life simply more fun everyday. And most importantly, thank you for accepting me and my cpap. To many more years of silliness and love ♥️.”
