Last week, reporter Vitalii Sediuk, notorious for pulling bizarre, often violent, celebrity-baiting stunts, creeped out the world when he grabbed Gigi Hadid as she exited the Max Mara show during Milan Fashion Week.
Thanks to Gigi’s superior boxing skills, the slight model successfully fought off Sediuk, who’d grabbed her and picked her up against her will. “Who the fuck are you, you piece of shit?” Hadid yelled, chasing after him as he ran off to escape her expertly aimed elbow jabs.
As Lena Dunham wrote in today’s Lenny Letter, the paparazzi footage of the event “is equal measures upsetting and empowering. It is chilling to watch, in real time, the ownership a stranger seems to feel toward a body he considers public domain. But it’s also stirring: in one swift movement, without the aid of her bodyguards, Gigi makes it clear that she will not be made to feel like anyone’s property.”
Strangely, before Sediuk was identified as the attacker, certain media outlets were quick to criticize the way Hadid handled the situation, calling the man a “prankster” and accusing Hadid of “aggressively lashing out” against a “fan.” Gigi, who felt — and rightly so — that her behavior was 100 percent appropriate, took to Twitter to address the issue: “The actual fans that were there can tell you what happened,” she wrote. “I’m a human being and had every right to defend myself. How dare that idiot think he has the right to manhandle a complete stranger.”
THANK YOU Rachel.
To unknown article writer: fan?!!! The ACTUAL fans that were there can tell you what happened. I’m a HUMAN BEING — https://t.co/G7Pbp0G8yP
Later that day, Sediuk attempted, via Instagram, to justify his manhandling the model. In an open letter, Gigi’s attacker reiterated the tired argument that Gigi and Kendall, while beautiful, are not worthy of the title of “supermodel,” have only made it in the industry due to their Instagram fame and connections and ought to learn a thing or two from real talents like Sasha Pivovarova and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
A photo posted by Vitalii Sediuk (@vitaliisediuk) on
He blamed those who put Gigi and Kendall on a pedestal — Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Vogue Japan’s Anna Dello Russo and Carine Roitfeld — for compelling him to act. Then, in a stunningly ignorant postscript, Sediuk mocked Zayn Malik’s mental health issues: “Gigi, your boyfriend, Zayn, is lucky he was not there, because it would be yet another panic attack to him.”
A photo posted by Vitalii Sediuk (@vitaliisediuk) on
Hadid, who clearly does not take attacks on her character or person lying down, penned a much more substantive take on the events for her aforementioned pal Lena Dunham’s biweekly feminist newsletter. In it, Gigi attributes her swift reaction to the attack to her years of boxing training and expresses her hope that the video inspires other women to learn self-defense.
“I remember taking the time, as it all felt slo-mo, to look at him, a stranger, and my first reaction was: ‘Get me out of this situation.’ I played volleyball, and my coaches talked about muscle memory. I started boxing two years ago and I always remembered that. Since then, I hadn’t been in a situation that forced me to fight back, but it just came out when he grabbed me — it wasn’t a choice. I do have that fighter in me,” she wrote.
Gigi acknowledges that she, as a public figure, was lucky to have her true fans at her side during this ordeal, but realizes that other victims of street harassment and abuse may not have such strong support networks.
“When my mom first saw what had happened, she texted me the picture of me elbowing the guy and (among other messages of support) said, ‘Good girl.’ My mom has taught me the power of my instincts since I was a kid. She’d always be like, ‘OK. Pay attention to the people who make you feel uncomfortable. I want you to tap into that and be aware of it.’ I continue to use that intuition with the fashion industry and the people who I have to be around. It usually guides me pretty well. I think it guided me in this situation, too,” Gigi shared.
She continued: “It sounds cliché to say it, but in the moment, it wasn’t heroic to me. It was just what I had to do. It’s very touching to me that people see it that way. I know people are put in much worse situations every day and don’t have the cameras around that provoke social-media support. I just want to use what happened to me to show that it’s everyone’s right, and it can be empowering, to be able to defend yourself.”
At the risk of also sounding cliché, we’d say Gigi’s rebounded gracefully from this traumatic event and successfully turned lemons into educational lemonade.Read the full letter here.
