Recently, YouTube “comedian” Nicole Arbour released a video entitled “Dear Fat People” in which she spews hateful, fat-shaming rhetoric for about six minutes. Although Arbour claimed that her video is “satire,” she stood by her clip, in which she states,
“Fat-shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up. If we offend you so much that you lose weight, I’m OK with that.” (It is unclear where Arbour thinks satire or humor comes into play, or who the “we” are.)
Elsewhere in her video, she calls fat-shaming, “the race card, [but] with no race!”
The video also criticizes the #bodypositive movement by claiming that it is destructive to people’s health, and comparing it to teen smoking and meth use. Pretty vile stuff.
But the Internet and Twitter wouldn’t let it stand.
Whitney Way Thore, star of TLC’s “My Big Fat Fabulous Life” shared a video response in which she criticizes Arbour’s stance, saying,
“You can’t see a person’s health from looking at them. […] You don’t know whether that person has a medical condition that has caused them to gain weight. You don’t know if their mother just died. You don’t know if they are depressed or suicidal, or if they just lost a hundred pounds!”
Thore’s video immediately went viral, with over 13 million views and counting, far surpassing the original fat-shaming video.
Another voice in the battle against this fat-shaming video is YouTube personality Meghan Tonjes, who called the video “lazy comedy wrapped in health and concern trolling.” Tonjes’s video has been viewed over 300 000 times.
Daniel Sulzbach, who goes by the name MrRepzion on YouTube, posted a response calling Arbour “the joke of satire.” Sulzbach criticized Arbour’s claim that she is trying to help overweight people to lose weight by saying,
“Shaming people’s behavior is actually one of the most counterproductive things you can do to help someone lose weight.”
YouTube star Grace Helbig also weighed in about the fat-shaming video, saying that she hopes that Arbour is earnestly seeking to start a conversation, but that,
“it looks like [she’s] using a controversial, personal subject to leverage subscribers and attention in a really negative way.”
Several of the responses have criticized the fact that Arbour has disabled likes and comments on her YouTube video, preventing the dialogue that she claims she wants to start.
It’s great to see allies of positive body image and enemies of body-shamers everywhere coming out in force to refute this vile tripe. We do need to have a discussion around body-shaming and fat-shaming, but it definitely shouldn’t be the one that Arbour started.
