TikTok influencer and actress Addison Rae is no stranger to rocking a bikini snap on her social media timeline. But what shocked netizens were seeing the words “father, son and holy spirit” splattered across her bikini.
In now-deleted Instagram pictures, the 21-year-old TikTok star shared photos of herself wearing the brand Praying in their Holy Trinity bikini.
The Holy Trinity line is part of a collaboration between the German sportswear brand Adidas and Indie-influenced fashion brand Praying. The controversial swimsuit has the words “Father” and “Son” across the top and “Holy Spirit” across the bottoms.
Online reaction to Addison Rae’s ‘Holy Trinity’ bikini
The swimsuit references the Christian Holy Trinity; the father (God), the son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.
After sharing the collaboration with her followers on Instagram, the actress immediately received online backlash for her outfit, as fans echoed comments such as “blasphemous”, “disrespectful”, and “so messed up”. Soon, Rae’s Instagram post was filled with similar comments saying:
“Nah this disrespectful to Jesus. Sad what y’all do for money,”
“This is not okay! BLASPHEMY!”
Meantime in the Twitterverse, people expressed the same angry comments about the brands’ bikini line and the 21-year-old influencer’s post. A user tweeted a screenshot of Rae’s Instagram post and captioned it:
“I wonder what christians think about addison rae’s post. The underwear says ‘holy spirit.’ is this not blasphemy?”
One would almost assume that Rae has joined a Satanic cult, as users flood the actress’ TikTok account with ‘prayer comments’ and cross emojis. Some of the other comments read:
“Jesus is king.”
“We was all rooting for you, how dare you.”
Adidas and Praying receive backlash for ‘Holy Trinity’ bikini
Following Rae’s post was a spiral of furious commenters flooding Adidas and Prayer’s Instagram pages.
Rae and Praying eventually deleted the Adidas collab. However, commenters were still unhappy about the situation and spilt their rage onto other posts.
On Praying’s Instagram page, people came out in masses, saying:
“This is way out of line, and extremely disrespectful!”
“Please remove this and stop disrespecting my religion and my God. This is another level of classless,”
On the Adidas Instagram page, there is a range of angry comments, such as:
“No wonder Kanye wanted to leave adidas.”
“Never wearing y’all again!”
Both Praying and Adidas have yet to respond to the ongoing backlash.
Commercialising Christian Imagery
The indie-style brand has generated a Gen Z following with its influence of the 2000’s nostalgia.
Other items include a crop top that reads “God’s Favorite,” a slip dress that says “Give Girls Money,” and an underwear version of the Holy Trinity set.
Besides Rae, other celebrities have shown Praying brand support, such as Olivia Rodrigo, Halsey, Madison Beer and many others.
Praying is described by Vogue as the “Fashion Industry’s Most Perverse Viral Hit”, an article dedicated to the brand and its unique take on innocent slogans juxtaposed with sexy designs.
The commercialization of Christian Imagery is not new in the fashion scene.
Would Kanye West’s ‘Christian merch’ and Justin Bieber’s ‘Holy t-shirt’ be considered equally offensive? Or could it be the context of Praying’s Holy Trinity bikini that people were triggered by – a few words printed on a garment specifically for the parts of a woman’s body that society tends to sexualise and shame both equally?
Addison Rae is not foreign to receiving scrutiny and criticism online. Maybe the combination of the TikTok influencer and the bikini context sparked massive outrage from fans.
All that we can now say regarding the matter is WWJD (what would Jesus do)?