Did Rihanna Just Respond To Body-Shamers On Instagram?

Rihanna appears to have responded to internet discourse about her weight that reached a boiling point following the publication of a Barstool Sports blog last week. In a Monday Instagram, the “Work” songstress posted a meme of Gucci Mane in an apparent response to her body-shamers.

“If you can’t handle me at my 2007 Gucci Mane, you don’t deserve me at my 2017 Gucci Mane,” read the meme, which referenced the rapper’s dramatic body transformation during the timeframe. Captioned with a tear emoji, the meme elicited a strong response from her Navy fan base on the platform. The post had been “liked” nearly half a million times by Monday evening.

Read: Rihanna Hit With Fat-Shaming Article: 6 Other Celebrities Who've Suffered The Same

The pop star’s fat-shaming culminated with an article last week that launched a dozen think pieces defending her as a result. A since-deleted blog titled “Is Rihanna Going to Make Being Fat the Hot New Trend?” by Barstool Sports blogger Chris “Spags” Spagnuolo described Rihanna’s purported “high key thiccness” as leading to “a world of ladies shaped like the Hindenburg.” Cosmopolitan reported Tuesday :

The author [...] writes that seeing Rihanna "pushing 180" is a "tough world to stomach" because Rihanna's influence as a cultural tastemaker means these new photos will inspire a world "where all the hottest girls look like the humans in Wall-E. And just in time for summer too."

Ultimately, the blog was deleted. As of Monday, multiple outlets reported that Spagnuolo had been suspended from blogging on the site indefinitely. His Twitter account seemed to confirm as much. Addressing the controversy in a statement last week, Barstool Sports’ founder David Portnoy wrote that if “you’re gonna blog about Rihanna gaining weight you better be funny as [expletive] and you better make it bullet proof.”

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“We have an extremely minor controversy going on with this fat shaming blog that Spags wrote. Lots of feminists not happy about it,” Portnoy wrote. “To be honest I don’t think the blog was as bad as many are making it out to be, but I’ll tell you this. It wasn’t that funny either and I could have told you with absolute certainty that feminists would hate it and use it as an example of ‘there goes Barstool being Barstool again.’ There are just certain topics that you better nail if you’re gonna write about them because you know they are hot button issues for us.’”

As International Business Times previously reported, Rihanna is hardly the first and certainly not the last female celebrity to fall prey to weight criticism. Selena Gomez, Jessica Simpson, Demi Lovato, Tyra Banks and many more have all been the targets of relentless and tasteless fat-shaming online.