Empowered in her Skin

Born Karenjit Kaur Vohra to Sikh Punjabi parents who lived in Sarnia, a tiny town in Ontario, Canada, Sunny was a sweet tomboy who played hockey with the boys on the sidewalks of her town. Long at ease with the attention her body and her athletic, singing, and dancing abilities brought her, Karenjit hoped to find a spot under the sun where she could shine.

Around 1991, she and her family moved to Southern California in the US. But instead of heading to a Khalsa camp her parents enrolled Karenjit in, she chose to connect with her heart. While training to become a nurse, she took up a job as an exotic dancer, calling herself “Sunny.” When one of her friends suggested that she try out modeling, Sunny decided to accept assignments from one of her contacts working in the adult entertainment industry. Soon, she became an adult model, posing for Penthouse, where she earned her second name, Leone—given to her by the Penthouse magazine founder, Robert Guccione. Despite her initial discomfort of posing erotically, Sunny soon became one of the top adult models in the country, appearing in several other magazines, including Swank, Leg World, and High Society. In 2001, she even became the ‘Penthouse Pet of the Month’ for its March issue.

In two years since she came to prominence, Celeste, unknown to her, was turning into an influencer with quite the reach. From writing two books—Celeste Barber – Challenge Accepted and Celeste the Giraffe That Loves to Laugh—and owning a podcast to raising A$ 50 million to help firefighters fighting Australian bushfires in the span of a week (when she hoped to raise A$ 15,000), Celeste perfectly fits in the definition of an influencer.

In October 2020, Celeste called out Instagram for their double standards on body-shaming when she parodied Victoria’s Secret model Candace Swanepoel’s picture, wearing an over-sized unbuttoned shirt. In her post, Candace can be seen posing against a succulent creeper, head tilted upwards with her eyes shut, with her palm covering the exposed part of her chest. In Celeste’s recreated picture, pretty much in the exact posture as that of Candace, wearing a thong (which was missing in Candace’s picture) and an exasperated expression, her caption read, “When you finally sit down and your kid asks for a drink.” 

Hilarious as the post was, Celeste’s followers couldn’t share her post as Instagram informed them that the post went against their “community guidelines on inappropriate content.” Ironically, though, fans could share Candace’s provocative picture.

Celeste shared the matter on her Instagram Story the next day. “Hey Instagram, sort out your body-shaming standards, guys. It’s 2020. Catch up,” she voiced. Her story went viral, compelling Instagram to apologize to her. They even promised to amend their community guidelines and policies.

Celeste calls herself an accidental celebrity and is convinced the world needs to change its beauty standards. “We’re saturated with a multibillion-dollar industry trying to body-shame us. There’s still such a long way to go. A more diverse range of women need to be seen, and should be the norm,” she’d told a publication recently.