Instagram Model Belle Delphine Is Selling Her Used Bathwater For $30
People actually bought it - and DRANK it!
Instagram A social media cosplay star is causing ripples by bottling and selling her own bathwater. Belle Delphine, who is known for her racy, anime-inspired Instagram posts took inspiration from besotted fans who often commented that they wanted to get closer to her, even suggesting that they would drink her bathwater. Last week she showed herself scooping up cups of water from a tub she was sitting in and announced that the water would be for sale on her newly launched online store.
Did people actually buy her bathwater? Read on for all the crazy details. Who is Belle Delphine?
1. Belle Delphine
The popular social media star was born Belle Kirschner in South Africa and moved to England when she was young. At 14, she started posting cosplay photos to Facebook and soon had over 100,000 followers. When she was 18, she got more risqué in her photo postings and moved largely to Instagram, where she indulges in gimmicks like writing fan names on her body and channeling an anime vibe in her pics. In 2019, she told fans she would move to PornHub if a photo got over a million likes. She did, but the videos she posted weren’t porn, much to the dismay of fans who apparently hoped for more than they got.
Delphine is a cosplay social media star.
2. Bathwater
Her fans sometimes post comments to her pictures that say things like "Let me drink your bathwater.” Never one to shy away from an opportunity, Delphine decided to give them the chance to have a taste of her bathwater. She announced the bathwater sale, as well as the launch of a merch shop on Instagram, saying “i am now selling my BATH WATER for all you THIRSTY gamer boys. check out my new shop where im [sic] selling stuff for you! www.belledelphinestore.com" She also posted a video of herself in the bath, shopping up the water into cups that would eventually, we assume, go on sale.
For the record, she did post a disclaimer saying “Bottled while I’m playing in the bath. This really is bath water. Disclaimer: This water is not for drinking and should only be used for sentimental purposes.”
She was offering the water for $30 per cup.
3. Sold out
The bathwater actually had demand behind it and after a few days, it was listed as sold out on her merch site. She took to Instagram to say” So my bath water SOLD OUT wtf.... i will be making some more soon but its been honestly a weird couple of days taking SO many baths LMAO i didnt [sic] expect this many people to be so interested, but if you wanted one...they will be back soon!”
Various people have tried to capitalize on this phenomenon by posting photos and videos of themselves with the bathwater they received. One YouTuber actually went so far as to drink it on camera, saying that it tasted terrible and it was definitely bathwater.
Fans have actually tasted the water.
4. Historical precedent
Belle Delphine isn’t the first celebrity to do weird things with bodily fluids. No one can forget the period in the 1990s when Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton were wearing vials of one another’s blood around their necks as a sign of their love. More recently, a cast member of the TLC show Smothered talks about taking a bath in water her mother has just vacated as a sign of affection and respect. Andy Warhol did a series of paintings using his own urine and semen. And even selling odd body artifacts isn’t new: in 1961 Piero Manzoni produced a series 90 sealed cans, numbered and labeled Artist’s Shit. Because the cans are steel and can’t be x-rayed, there is doubt as to whether or not they contain feces. Manzoni originally priced them equal to a comparable amount of gold; about $37 at the time. In 2016, one the cans sold at an auction in Milan for €275,000.
The cans sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
5. Herpes
Like much viral content, the stunt has produced conspiracy theories in its wake. The fact-checking site Snopes reports that on July 7, a Twitter account posted a headline reading ““Over 50 People Have Reportedly Contracted Herpes After Drinking Instagram Star Belle Delphine’s Bath Water.” The account, which uses the handle @BakeRises later confirmed that the herpes story was a hoax meant to stress out the people who bought the water. Belle Dephine responded to the rumor in her own Instagram comments saying “You’re a [clown] if you believed that.”
The tweet is a hoax.
It’s hard to imagine what stunt Belle Delphine will come up with next but it seems certain her fans will be up for whatever it is.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.