Gracie Bon has defended her decision to post photographs of herself at earthquake devastation sites in Panama.
The plus-sized Panamanian influencer, who has 11.9 million Instagram followers, faced immediate backlash after sharing images that showed her amid the ruins of homes destroyed by Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake. The quake, which struck the Central American nation, took out nearly 900 homes and left widespread destruction across affected areas.
Bon, 225 lbs., had previously drawn attention for criticizing McLaren after she could not fit her 55-inch hips into the British automaker’s sports cars. That earlier controversy paled in comparison to the reaction her earthquake posts generated, with Instagram users accusing her of making a national crisis about herself.
“It’s one thing to report on the situation in the country, but quite another to create content based on other people’s misfortunes!” one Instagram user wrote.
“Momma, don’t you understand that for the message to get through, you don’t need to be in the picture?” another user pointed out in the comments section.
Critics questioned both her posing and her decision to have someone photograph her at the site. “Seriously. Was it necessary to pose?” another person asked. “I can’t believe she actually asked someone to take pictures of her in front of someone’s destroyed house,” one user added.
Bon pushed back against the accusations in a follow-up post directed at her massive following. She insisted that she had not been posing for the photographs and framed the images as documentary rather than self-promotional.
“I am not posing. I simply decided to post a picture of myself in it,” Bon said in her Instagram response to the backlash.
“My intention was to help with resources and find some families that I could help rebuild their homes,” she added.
The model supplemented her defense with additional content showing her carrying a case of water to disaster victims. She said she is also donating to reconstruction efforts and suggested critics should refrain from attacking her charitable activities.
The defense did not satisfy all observers. One commenter directly challenged Bon’s approach to aid work, arguing that assistance did not require social media documentation.
“When everything you do is turned into advertising for your own benefit, that’s what bothers many people,” the user wrote.
“You can do good things without having to constantly post everything on social media for attention.”
The controversy highlights ongoing tensions between influencer culture and disaster response, where the documentation of charitable acts becomes inseparable from personal brand-building. Bon’s case follows a familiar pattern in which social media personalities face scrutiny for the visual presentation of their involvement in crises.
The earthquake that prompted Bon’s visit and subsequent posts was a 7.7-magnitude event that struck Panama on Friday, causing catastrophic damage to nearly 900 homes and displacing numerous families across the affected region. The scale of destruction made it one of the most significant natural disasters in the country’s recent history, drawing both traditional media coverage and, in Bon’s case, an influencer’s personal documentation that quickly became its own flashpoint.
Bon has not indicated whether she will continue posting from disaster zones as she pursues her stated goal of helping families rebuild.