When 18 year-old model Paige Reifler admitted that she was ‘seeing’ Harry Styles, she no-doubt expected to get a little bit of media attention, but what we doubt she expected was a torrent of abuse from One Directioners on Twitter and even death threats.
Paige has now threatened to go to the police after receiving a deluge of abusive messages on social media including threats to kill the New York model. She just posted:
‘I hope you all know that giving die threats is a crime. I could report you to the police. The hate can also be reported.’
For now, we’ll skip over the phrase ‘die threats’ and just look at the utterly bonkers response she received, with one fan tweeting: ‘are you dating Harry or not? That’s the only thing we want to know and when we don’t get answers we kill’and others calling her a gold digger and asking her to commit suicide. Which is just lovely.
Paige and Harry, 20, apparently got together again after dating last year at a party at London’s Shoreditch House earlier this month.
At the time, she explained about the night: ‘I went to the Warner party at Shoreditch House with a friend and saw him there.
‘The next morning I woke up and I was in all of the newspapers and magazines. I wasn't expecting that, it's not like that in New York.’
Asked if she was still dating the singer, she replied: ‘Yes, I am seeing him.’
Not exactly a crime warranting death threats is it? Whilst it’s easy to brush this off as just the outbursts of some crazy One Direction fans, we do think it’s symptomatic about the way women who date famous men are treated. The fact that people called Paige – a 20 year-old woman with her own career and financial security – a gold digger is telling because it buys into the often quoted idea that women ‘hunt down’ eligible men to ‘bag’ as if she is somehow stealing him from the rest of us. It’s a very weird way to look at two people fancying each other and snogging isn’t it? We sincerely hope she does go to police, because death threats – even those produced from the relative safety of behind a keyboard – are obviously no laughing matter.
Picture: Getty
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.