My Open Letter to Nicole Arbour,

My Open Letter to Nicole Arbour,

Dear Nicole,

I’m guessing you’ve had a pretty shitty few days. I’m honestly not here to make them worse. I am here, however, to try and educate you about the effect that your words may have had. But I’m not talking about the effect they had on me. I’m a grown woman. I’m 23 years old. And I’m a fatty. I know this and I am still living my best life. I’m lucky that I am strong enough to deal with the abuse and general nastiness that comes when you are a fat person, although I wasn’t always.

The effect I want to tell you about is the one that you will have had on a young person. Maybe one like my 14 year old cousin (who’s also my goddaughter and more like my sister). She’s beautiful, like every young person, and I don’t even know if she’s seen your video. But when I watched it, it was her that I immediately thought of.

Now, some of the fault for this worry does not lie with you. The constant perpetuation by the mainstream media that without being a UK size 6 you are not worth the time of day when it comes to any kind of activity is not something that you started or are responsible for. It’s not you that chooses to consistently show the same body type as the only one that has any worth or value, nor are you responsible for the constant pressure for young people to be sexualised too early (especially young women – case in point, Emma Watson was sexualised in the media far earlier that Rupert Grint or Dan Radcliffe).

Where you come in is in conjunction with this. Video’s like yours terrify me because they reiterate that point in a harsh and cruel way. That young women like my cousin can stumble across your material and be made to feel that having a larger body type is wrong. I’m not even talking about fat girls. I have watched my slim, athletically built cousin look at her UK size 10 body and complain that her thighs are too fat and she needs to lose weight. She comes from a family of fatties – trust me, she’s not getting this from us. She plays rugby, she’s in the army cadets, she’s the fittest out of all of us, and still she doesn’t feel good enough.

And that is what concerns me. Videos that you and others intend to be funny are scaring young beautiful people. Male or female, gay or straight, white or a POC, trans or gender queer, or anything else in between - it doesn’t matter, we should be building them up not tearing them down.  Young people who maybe aren’t strong enough to recognise that no-one else’s opinion matters are seeing videos like yours and not realising that they do not have to conform to these unrealistic body standards. And I’m not just talking about the obese kids. I’m talking about the healthy weight kids, the kids with eating disorders, the girl with the boobs which are too big and the guy who is too short. Videos like this encourage them aspire to a photoshopped perfection which they can never reach. They have another decade in front of them before they start to realise (if they’re like me) that what we are told and shown by the world maybe isn’t what’s right for us. And a those ten years could be dangerous ones, in terms of the physical and mental health repercussions that can come from body image issues.  

Bodyshaming in ANY format is cruel and unnecessary. You showed that you yourself have experienced it when you made the joke about a blonde explaining things, having obviously been told because you’re a blonde you’re dumb (or simply heard all the old jokes like I did when I was blonde. Fat and blonde – they were not a good few years…). That you would perpetuate that in anyway makes me sad. You’re a woman. You have been judged for your body. That is the inevitable but sad truth. It makes me sad that someone who appears to know what it’s like is perpetuating the action.

I don’t want this message to make you feel bad. I want it to educate you. I want you to understand the repercussions of a video like this one. As an adult who has fought her way out of depression and is happy, I can watch your video, shake my head and not let it follow me for the rest of the day. Some kids watching this may have it follow them for the rest of their life.

That is the reason many people have reacted in the way that they have. Like me, they are scared for the kids.

So next time you use your platform to talk about an issue like this one – go for it. I would never stop you expressing your opinions and encouraging the world to pursue a life that makes them happy and healthy is fantastic.

Just next time think about how you say it. That’s all.

With love (from a fatty)