Before she was Miss Bum Bum 2025, before the Playboy cover and the millions of followers, Kerolay Chaves was just a 21-year-old trying to buy biscuits — and getting thrown out of a supermarket for what she was wearing.
In April 2023, the Brazilian influencer walked into a supermarket in Belo Horizonte wearing high-cut denim shorts, a white crop top and flip-flops, pushing her shopping trolley down the aisles like any other customer. She walked out as the center of an international debate.
Kerolay took to Instagram on April 21, 2023, and told her 435,000 followers exactly what happened. “Just came from the supermarket and was bullied for wearing ‘too short clothes,’” she wrote. “Some people looked with prejudice, others cursed me and finally, I was kicked out of the site. Do you believe it?”
She didn’t stop there. “I think it’s absurd that we women are still treated this way just because we dress how we want,” she continued. “Truth is, we go through it because we’re too hot, that’s all!”
The Birth of “Hot Woman Phobia”
It was in the fallout of the supermarket incident that Kerolay coined the phrase that would follow her for years: “hot woman phobia” — her name for what she describes as discrimination against attractive women.
“I felt offended by the gratuitous hate I received both in the market and in my Instagram post,” she later said. “I think all these insults have more to do with the ‘hot woman phobia’ I face on a daily basis.”
The Internet Was Divided
The post exploded — hundreds of thousands of likes, shares across Brazil, then pickup by international outlets including Indy100, YourTango and OutKick. But the court of public opinion was split.
Supporters rallied behind her: “Wrong thing they did to you. Everyone wears clothes that feel better,” wrote one follower. Others were less sympathetic. “No need to go to a supermarket dressed like that,” one commenter wrote. “You are embarrassing the decent people who are often there with children.”
Kerolay never named the supermarket. But she didn’t need to — the photos did the talking, and the debate raged for weeks.
From Scandal to Stardom
Looking back, the supermarket saga was the moment Kerolay Chaves learned how to turn outrage into attention — a skill that would define her career. The “too hot” girl from the Belo Horizonte supermarket went on to grace the cover of Playboy, build a TikTok following of 2.4 million, and ultimately claim the Miss Bum Bum 2025 crown.
Love her or judge her, one thing is undeniable: Kerolay Chaves knew exactly what she was doing when she walked into that supermarket — and exactly what to do after she was walked out.
2026: The “Living Panini Album”
If the supermarket scandal taught Kerolay how to turn controversy into currency, the summer of 2026 proved she has a PhD in it. Just days before the FIFA World Cup kicked off in North America on June 11, the influencer unveiled a viral stunt for the ages: she covered herself in more than 1,000 World Cup football stickers — including Cristiano Ronaldo, Marcus Rashford and Enzo Fernández — transforming into what she dubbed a “living Panini album.”
The painstaking process reportedly took seven hours, and the images detonated online. The Sun, LatestLY and Bored Panda all picked it up, with fans joking she had taken sticker collecting to a whole new level and calling it one of the most unconventional World Cup tributes in recent memory.
Her Complicated Romance With Football
Here’s the twist: Kerolay’s football stunts come with genuine grievance attached. She has openly claimed the 2022 World Cup in Qatar slashed her income by 60 percent, as her audience’s attention shifted from her content to the tournament. Love it or bill it — the World Cup both pays and costs her.
Three years after the supermarket saga, the numbers tell the story: more than five million Instagram followers and counting, a career built on one unshakeable rule — every scandal is just content waiting to happen.
