By: Brittany White
Dear Nicole Arbour, do me a favor and never upload a video again, especially if you plan
on publicly humiliating someone else. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve
probably heard about Nicole Arbour, the newly popular YouTube star that gained a lot of
negative attention after uploading a video entitled, “Dear Fat People”, in which she tries
to use her humor to rant on about obese people for six minutes straight. “What are you
gonna do, fat people? Are you gonna chase me?” Arbour exclaims in the beginning of her
video. And she continues on to compare fat people to slow-moving zombies. Yes you
read that correctly. I’m pretty sure if an overweight person saw Ms. Arbour on the street
they could easily chase her and knock her down.
Moving on she also said, “Fat shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up. It’s like a
race card with no race”. This is completely untrue. Fat shaming is definitely a thing and
has been considered a major part of bullying for a long time. Being overweight isn’t easy,
especially when you’ve been called names or publicly ridiculed by others on how you
look. I truly believe if Arbour had ever experienced this, she would have never filmed
this video. More highlights from this unreal video include “shame people who have bad
habits until they f**king stop…If we offend you so much that you lose weight, I’m OK
with that.” So she’s openly admitting she’s bullying overweight people until they lose
weight.
She then later says, “I’m not saying all this to be an a–hole, I’m saying it because your friends should be saying this to you. Think of me as one of your ride or dies.” No
Arbour you are not our friend and I truly feel bad for any of your friends who are. I
myself am overweight and if I ever had a friend talk to me the way Arbour does in this
video, would no longer be friends. My own family has bullied me about my weight, the
last I need is this “celebrity” trying to bring me down because I’m struggling to lose
weight. Luckily a lot of people agree with me.
Since the video went viral, everyone has shared their thoughts on it, including other popular youtubers like Tyler Oakley who tweeted Arbour’s video was “disappointing content”. Well-known plus size model Ashley Graham stated the video was “She is a funny girl but the subject matter is disgusting,” Graham said. “I feel like women already have so much that they have to go through in their day-to-day, so why are you going to sit there and tell us you’re fat or tell us that we are big boned?” And that’s exactly the point. She could have made a similar video about really skinny people and it still would have been offensive.
The point is the video is wrong, and instead of her fat shaming people, she should be promoting body positivity.
But instead of coming out with any kind of apology, she has been defending
herself claiming YouTube temporarily took the video, saying she was using satire
comedy, and that if she was a man this video wouldn’t have been a problem. Again she’s
wrong. Man or woman, gay or straight, black or white, this video is mean and is
displaying the wrong message to young boys and girls out there, and should be
permanently removed from social media. Because the more we share it, the more
publicity she gets, and that’s not okay.
