Nicole Arbour argues fat people deserve to be shamed in YouTube rant; offends everyone [View all]

[Blue_Adept]

Remember that youtube is where the next generation of "reality stars" are coming from. There are some good ones out there to be sure, but also realize that a lot of kids/teens soak up a whole lot of this material from various personalities.

Last week, she posted a video called ‘Dear Fat People’. On her Facebook page, she captioned it: ‘This is what we’ve all wanted to say to fat people’. The controversial clip led to her YouTube account being temporarily suspended, following a backlash led by other social media stars.

Nicole begins the six minute rant by saying ‘Fat shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up. ‘That’s the race card with no race.’ She mimics: “Yeah, but I couldn’t fit into a store. That’s discrimination”. Uh no. That means you are too fat, and you should stop eating.’


She qualifies that she’s not talking about people who have a ‘little cushion for the pushing’ or people with specific health conditions, but rather the ’35 per cent of North Americans who are obese’.

‘If we offend you so much that that you lose weight, I’m okay with that,’ she argues. ‘You are killing yourself.’ She also goes on to mock body positive hashtags on social media, saying:’If you really think enough of you hashtag something bad for you, it makes it okay?’

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Some interesting discussions do come out of things like this, especially the whole body image issue across the board, whether humor can work in all situations (or in particular ways) and about the validity of "x"-shaming, which has been rising alongside trigger warnings and other social media tags in the last few years.

All I can say, as a terribly obese person myself, is that what she says doesn't work for me. In fact, it can actually make me feel pretty fucking lousy. At my worst, I was at 434 lbs and my doc telling me I had to make changes or I'd be dead in a year. I ended up losing 170lbs without surgery and a hell of a lot of hard work. But hey, I'd still be shamed by someone like Arbour because even down to 270, I got an immense amount of grief and shaming by other people and that sent me into a spiral - while I was feeling good about myself.

Hence ending up back at 375 again earlier this summer. Took it under control again and lost another 30lbs since June through all sorts of changes.

Words have power and our lack of ability to know what other people are going through should caution us about what we see - in person and online.

Fucking empathy, people. fucking empathy.