She Was Always a Child: The Exploitation of Danielle Bregoli (Bhad Bhabie)
- Imani Ahiro
- Oct 10
- 5 min read
On abuse, agency, and the internet’s obsession with destroying the girls it creates.
The Internet hates Bhad Bhabie, but the Internet made her.
I have been compelled by the story of Danielle Bregoli, aka Bhad Bhabie, for years.
A polarising figure who shot into the spotlight in 2016 — red hair and a “bad attitude”, on Dr Phil.
Thrust into pop culture with “Catch me outside, how ’bout that?”
Whether you like her or don’t like her, at the end of the day, she has your attention.
Furthermore she is a victim of abuse, a victim of continuous exploitation.
She has been through severe sexual trauma as a child, emotional abuse from her mother, thrust into the spotlight as a preteen.
She mentioned on a YouTube video with Ari Fletcher being a victim of multiple incidents of sexual abuse in childhood by people she was told to trust.
One of them being a security guard who she had a close relationship with. In her reality show ‘Bringing Up Bhabie’, this security guard became a parental figure. He was also exploiting her.
The show helped protect him — created an image that she was a problematic teen and he was a hero.
I think people are dumb and don’t know how to hold the complexities of human emotion.
She can be the problem — yes — in the way that her behaviour comes across.
But where did that problem lie?
Why is she acting out the way she is?
But instead, we want to believe the easy story: that she is just a child with a bad attitude.
Multiple men in the entertainment industry have had predatory relationships with her.
The way she described it on Ari Fletcher’s show — she spoke as if she had agency in these relationships.
But she was a child. Around the age of 13 to 16 years old.
A child does not have agency. A child cannot consent. Whether that child has a bad attitude or not.
A child with behavioural issues is a child who is screaming out for help.
Millions of people on the Internet tearing into her.
This is not to excuse her behaviour — but an observation of the exploitation she is experiencing.
Whether you like her or don’t like her, she is still being subjected to abuse.
Abuse victims don’t have to be likable people.
They can be horrible people. They can be absolutely the worst —
but that doesn’t mean they are not victims of abuse.
The Internet hates Bhad Bhabie, but the Internet made her.
The Internet claims to hate everything she does — but still tunes in.
We feed her. We made her.
I also want to add — she’s quite intelligent.
Her story is one of success: someone who came from poverty, now having millions.
Millions, again, might I add — from exploitation.
When she turned 18 — she started an OnlyFans and made millions.
She built an empire.
She built an empire out of the exploitation of her body.
She is working against the system she finds herself in.
And in the moments I’ve seen her talk about it — in interviews like the one with Ari Fletcher — she is acutely aware of the world she lives in.
How is it her fault?
That people were praying and waiting for her to turn of age to start sexualising her — or openly sexualising her?
We are the disgusting ones.
Giving lashings to a literal child.
Yeah, I know a lot of people don’t like her — but you don’t have to like her, to be able to feel sympathy for her.
Believe me, I get it - but to say you don’t feel sorry for her, I feel it lacks humanity.
We — the culture — are irritated by her. For good reason.
Danielle has long been criticised for co-opting Black aesthetics — from wearing box braids, using AAVE (African American Vernacular English), to imitating the mannerisms and styles associated with Black girls. Yet she has not aligned herself with Black causes or used her platform to speak up for the communities she profits from.
To many, her rise felt like another case of “hood cosplay” — where proximity to Blackness is profitable for white or white-passing people, while Black girls expressing the same behaviour are criminalised or ridiculed.
What makes it even more uncomfortable is that Danielle has sometimes made derogatory comments about the very culture she imitates. There’s a dissonance in mimicking Blackness while distancing herself from Black people.
But even here, things get complicated. Danielle herself is a product of exploitation — a child molded by an industry that profits off “ratchet” behaviour, as long as it comes in a palatable, white-skinned package. She benefits from the system, but she’s also a pawn in it.
None of this absolves her — but it complicates how we see her. She’s not just appropriating — she’s surviving, and the lines between the two are blurred in a world that profits off Blackness without protecting it.
What I find myself fixated on currently is the toxic and abusive relationship she has with her baby father.
I remember listening to a podcast that she was on with Emily Ratajkowski.
She was discussing her childhood — being thrust into the spotlight — and how she was becoming as a person.
She was around 20 years old at the time, and she mentioned she had been seeing someone for two months.
Someone who was by her side every single day —
and the love that she had with him felt different from anyone else she’d ever been with.
From the outside looking in, it looked like love bombing.
The way she described him — as if he had a halo.
This was a love that she’d never experienced.
I think she’s telling the truth.
And that’s what makes it so much more sad.
She has been conditioned — from what I can see — by her mother and her absent father to see this as love.
Her mother has been verbally abusive on multiple occasions.
I’ve also seen her mother be loving.
So the relationship she is in right now — it is no surprise.
She has been groomed. Prepared to be abused.
By her parents. By the industry. By society.
When I listened to that podcast, I felt immediately uneasy.
Maybe it was a bit of me.
But I did some digging and found he was in his mid twenties, not someone who was in the limelight.
Maybe I cared too much about a stranger on the Internet.
But I felt for her.
I had hoped I was wrong, that I was reading too much into things.
We flash forward.
She has a baby for that man.
She’s screaming on top of cars.
He is throwing her around, beating her, abusing her, cheating on her.
She was reportedly diagnosed with cancer.
I am deeply saddened by what’s going on with Danielle.
I know men don’t like her.
But that doesn’t make what she’s going through any less horrific.
It’s clear as day that man is a problem.
Exploitative. Horrible. Hurtful.
Maybe this is me projecting.
But I see something of myself in her.
She’s been taken advantage of almost all of her life.
No one she is around seemingly truly cares about her.
How is she supposed to know, if she has always known pain?
—
Sources:
High Low with EmRata, Sept 22, 2023
Ari Fletcher and Bhad Bhabie
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