Bikini model reveals revenge on men who send her vile abuse online

A swimwear model has revealed the clever way she gets back at men who send her vile, sexist abuse over social media.

Model Lindsey Pelas has plenty of admirers, and it’s not hard to see why.

But among her 8.6 million Instagram followers are a few sexist trolls who slide into her DMs and hurl horrific abuse – and unfortunately for them, The Sun reports, they don’t realise who they’re dealing with.

Pelas was already pretty used to men’s bad behaviour by the time she found success as a model.

Speaking to The Sun, the 31-year-old recalled how she was targeted as a teenager.

“At 18 years old, I worked at Hooters in Louisiana and I didn’t know the can of worms that would open,” she said.

“People would take photos of me and I would be berated on the internet, way before Instagram. Talking about my body type, making up personal relationships.

“I would just be repeatedly abused. I was told I needed plastic surgery, that I’d had plastic surgery. I was told every contradiction under the sun just to abuse me.”

Swimwear model Lindsey Pelas has revealed the clever way she gets back at men who send her vile, sexist abuse over social media. Picture: Instagram

Fast forward over a decade later, and she’s had to develop a thick skin to deal with some of the men who message her on social media.

She’s experienced “cruel haters, abuse, scary people, people praying for my demise”.

“Some people will message me every single day psycho stuff. Threats,” she said, calling the messages “mean” and “obnoxious”.

“The majority of the abusive content on the internet is from men. Women really do not actively seek to harm me as much.”

She recalled one particular man who worked for a well-known company and “kept sending me disturbing messages”.

“And one day I’d had enough. I looked up his LinkedIn and posted those messages to his workplace,” she said.

Pelas, 31, has received “disturbing” messages and comments about her looks from a young age. Picture: Instagram

“Because I truly feared that he worked with women and I couldn’t imagine someone who was so obsessed with violence toward women working with and controlling the paychecks of women.

“I went ahead and told his boss … they responded publicly and said they would look into it. He had to have been fired.”

Pelas admitted she will take similar action if she gets abusive messages from men who work in schools or around children.

The odd thing, of course, is that these men seem to like looking at her social media content – yet they don’t treat her with respect.

She said that men seem to get especially angry when they see a woman who is making money off her body or good looks.

That’s even though they don’t seem to have the same issue if men are making money off of women’s looks, she noted.

She said she gets “psycho” messages and comments “every single day” online. Picture: Instagram

“A significant amount of industry has benefited from the beauty of women. Beer, football, cars, luxury anything, and even male celebrities,” she said.

“They’ve used the bodies and beauty of women in music videos, in movies, and in magazines. It’s only a problem if women are paid directly for their own beauty.

“They’re offended when a woman makes the money and doesn’t have to pay a man through it. It’s such an obsolete idea.”

But, she stresses that there should be nothing wrong with a woman making money off her looks – especially in a “patriarchal society in which women are not represented fairly in government, in business, in politics”.

“Women have to do what they can to make some cash, and hopefully they use their voice while they make some cash,” she said.

“In my opinion, women deserve money first. Women need to equalise the financial playing field first so that we have an ecosystem to support each other so we’re paid for our talents beyond our beauty.

“But if this is the area we’re pigeonholed into, get the cash, ladies.”

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Bikini model reveals revenge on men who send her vile abuse online