  We discuss a variational model, given by a weighted sum of perimeter, bending
and Riesz interaction energies, that could be considered as a toy model for
charged elastic drops. The different contributions have competing preferences
for strongly localized and maximally dispersed structures. We investigate the
energy landscape in dependence of the size of the 'charge', i.e. the weight of
the Riesz interaction energy. In the two-dimensional case we first prove that
for simply connected sets of small elastic energy, the elastic deficit controls
the isoperimetric deficit. Building on this result, we show that for small
charge the only minimizers of the full variational model are either balls or
centered annuli. We complement these statements by a non-existence result for
large charge. In three dimensions, we prove area and diameter bounds for
configurations with small Willmore energy and show that balls are the unique
minimizers of our variational model for sufficiently small charge.
