Aoki Lee Simmons snapped at her big sister, Ming Lee, over what she felt was a backhanded compliment about her looks.
The two daughters of Russell and Kimora Lee Simmons went back and forth in a clip from their mother’s new reality TV show, “Kimora: Back in the Fab Lane.”
The show originally aired on E! in 2007, and the reboot features the 23-year-old throwing a fit, comparable to a kid’s tantrum, even after Ming explained what she truly meant. And fans think Aoki’s ill-fated romance with a man decades older than her is to blame for how she views herself.
Aoki was just 21 when she was caught on camera kissing a 65-year-old wealthy restaurateur, Vittorio Assaf, on the beach on the island of St. Barts in a tiny bikini.
The model wore an equally revealing one-piece Baby Phat swimsuit in one house scene and she walked up to her big sis for validation.
Ming Lee simply stated, “You look good. You look healthy,” before Aoki blasted, “F–you.”
As the older Simmons daughter gasped, the Harvard graduate snapped again, “You look healthy? … Healthy means fat in this house, and you’re kind of an a-shole for that.”
Despite Ming Lee insisting that wasn’t what she meant, noting how “refreshed” Aoki looked, her tone didn’t change. She returned the compliment to her sister. “Healthy? You look healthy. You look very healthy. I look fat? Tell the truth! … You’re calling me fat!”
In a confessional, Ming explained that she thought her sister looked much healthier since returning from Bali than she did before she left. “You meant healthy in a weird day,” Aoki continued, not believing Ming, who replied, “No, I didn’t. You just make things up.”
Cutting back to the show, Aoki walks over to production to share how displeased she was with her sis. “She meant gurthy, she meant could last the winter. She meant like you look ready to hibernate.”
Fans were shocked that Aoki got so upset over a compliment, and they were not shy in speculating about why the model acted as she did. Her mother, Kimora Lee Simmons, was brought up in the comments after a clip was shared on Instagram, and so was Assaf.
“Nothing about this conversation is ‘healthy,'” replied one Instagram user. Dozens believe this short glimpse of Ming and Aoki exposes tension brewing off-camera or behind the scenes between the two sisters.
“She knows her sister and she knows it was fade. Cuz what do you mean, did I not look healthy before?!?” said one person while another believed, “This is clearly something deeper.”
A third added, “It was definitely shade, look at her facial expression.”
Coming to Ming’s defense, one person exclaimed, “I think she meant like she looks like she’s gaining weight again idk as a sister I do be concerned too like she looked her up and down because she noticed a change. it wasn’t shade it’s like ok girl progress.”
Due to their mother’s history and decades long career as a supermodel, many pointed the finger at the girls’ mother. “Kimora is responsible for this mindset,” added a fourth person.
But another critic disagreed, “Aoki ain’t been the same since she was with that old guy.”
At the time, Kimora Lee Simmons claimed her daughter was set up when she was caught kissing her ex in St. Barts.
“She’s a young pretty girl, and you know, I think that we don’t think that the toads we may kiss [are] gonna be, like, broadcast,” Kimora said. “And I personally feel a little bit like she was set up, which is why I try to teach the girls, right?”
However, during an appearance on the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast, Kimora said she lets her children make their own mistakes, and she knew that Assaf had a “reputation.”
“I let my kids make their own mistakes,” she said. “I know this guy growing up myself. He’s a restaurateur. I don’t know, I don’t want to get into troubles legally, but I think his reputation probably precedes him. Is that OK to say legally?”
“It blew up to be so much, so then you can’t be the mom that’s like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ But that definitely was the thing,” she added. “I was like, ‘Aoki, I didn’t even know this was a thing.’ I found out when the world found out. … So that was what was so shocking.”
Kimora added that she thought Assaf was “predatorial” for dating her young daughter.
“I feel like — and having gone through not exactly the same but similar — that big age gap relationship, let’s just call it that, I do think it’s predatorial,” she said. “I think that’s predatorial and kinda crazy.”
Simmons and the restaurateur broke up just four days after the photograph was published.
