Olivia Rodrigo has been branded a hypocrite for attending a Met Gala after-party just hours after supporting a boycott of the event due to benefactor Jeff Bezos. Shortly before Monday night's event, the 23-year-old songstress liked a post on the Instagram page of activist group Everyone Hates Elon, in which members projected words of protest onto the Amazon founder's $120 million New York City home.
Her support of the post appeared to show the singer joining the chorus of outcry from stars who boycotted the event because of Jeff and his wife Lauren Sanchez's participation. However, she seemed to have a change of heart later on. While she did not attend the main event, she was spotted celebrating the evening at the Saint Laurent Met Gala after-party at People's Bar, despite having liked the post about the projection of the words: 'Boycott the Bezos Met Gala.'
Jeff Bezos is a target of ire due to the controversy surrounding the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s expanded mass deportation initiative, which has contracts with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Everyone Hates Elon's campaign against the gala saw a host of stunts, including the projection at Jeff's home, which featured a video of an Amazon worker.
As well as his work with ICE and Donald Trump affiliations, Amazon is famed for its ill-treatment of workers. The video showed Mary, a 72-year-old Amazon worker from North Carolina, delivering a message for tonight's Met Gala chair Jeff. Mary said: 'Jeff Bezos, my name is Mary Hill, I am a 72-year-old warehouse worker at one of your facilities. When we struggle from pay cheque to pay cheque, from week to week, it really angers me because if it weren't for every associate in every Amazon facility he wouldn't have all those zeros behind his name... Shame on you Jeff Bezos. The people that need to be celebrated at the Met Gala are the workers. People like me. We deserve that celebration. We deserve so much more than we're getting. There's power in numbers and there's more of us than you... Remember ordinary people like us, we built it and we can tear it down. Think about that tonight after that bottle of champagne before you go to bed. We're gonna keep going and we're gonna keep building and we're gonna keep protesting... We're gonna keep fighting this dystopian culture, we're not stopping. We're just getting cranked up. Enjoy your damn Gala.'
The previous day, Bella Hadid hit out at stars attending the event. The 29-year-old supermodel, who has attended the gala five times, liked a video by internet personality Meredith Lynch on Instagram stating: 'You cannot wear the ICE out pin to the Jeff Bezos-backed MET Gala. Jeff Bezos is part of the reason we're in this mess.' The backlash comes due to Jeff's behemoth organisation having contracts with ICE and AWS, reportedly hosting data for Palantir, which provides software to ICE for tracking and identifying immigrants.
As well as his ICE affiliation, Amazon's alleged treatment of its workforce has also caused issues, with Everyone Hates Elon displaying posters around New York reading: 'The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation.' An industry insider told the Daily Mail prior to the event: 'It's, quite frankly, very hurtful and very disturbing for [the Bezoses] to be the face of this year's Met Gala... Something that is really meaningful to a lot of people and to such a highly regarded and highly respected institution. It feels like a real slap in the face to a lot of people.' It was revealed that Meryl Streep was offered a place as one of the Met Gala's co-chairmen this year, but allegedly declined to do so because of the Bezoses.
