There's a particular species of celebrity that exists primarily in relation to someone more famous — the ex-girlfriend, the rumored fling, the woman photographed leaving a restaurant with. Elsie Hewitt, the 28-year-old model who dated Pete Davidson in 2023, has spent the years since navigating that peculiar purgatory. Her latest bikini content, shared this week across social platforms, reads less like casual summer posting and more like a declaration of independence.
The images are technically unremarkable: standard swimwear, golden-hour lighting, the visual vocabulary of every model with a phone and a beach. What makes them notable is the timing and the framing — Hewitt tagged no location, mentioned no brand deal, invoked no celebrity association. In the economy of influencer attention, this is practically monastic restraint.
The ex-girlfriend industrial complex
Dating Pete Davidson has become something of a career event for the women involved. The comedian's roster of famous girlfriends — Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, Kate Beckinsale, among others — has created a strange feedback loop where being his ex confers a certain tabloid legitimacy. For women who were already famous, it's a footnote. For those who weren't, it can become the defining fact of their public existence.
Hewitt, who had a modeling career before Davidson and has continued one since, has been notably resistant to leaning into the association. She rarely mentions him, doesn't appear to trade on the connection, and has focused instead on building a presence in the wellness and lifestyle space. The strategy is smart, if unglamorous: better to be a mid-tier influencer on your own terms than a permanent supporting character in someone else's narrative.
The summer content calendar
The timing of Hewitt's posts aligns with what industry observers call the "summer body economy" — the annual surge in fitness, swimwear, and lifestyle content that peaks between Memorial Day and Labor Day. For models and influencers, this period represents the highest-value real estate on the content calendar, when engagement rates climb and brand partnerships multiply.
Hewitt appears to be playing this game with unusual discipline. Her feed over the past month shows a careful mix of aspirational lifestyle content, subtle product integration, and the kind of effortless-seeming glamour that brands pay handsomely for. The bikini shots aren't thirst traps; they're portfolio pieces.
Our take
There's something almost admirable about Hewitt's refusal to be reduced to a celebrity footnote. In an attention economy that rewards shamelessness and punishes subtlety, she's chosen the harder path: building something that belongs to her, even if it means building it slowly. The bikini pictures will generate clicks — that's how this works — but they're in service of a larger project. Whether that project succeeds is another question, but at least she's asking it on her own terms.
