Dear Fat People

About

Dear Fat People is a monologue video featuring Nicole Arbour in which the Canadian comedian / vlogger openly criticizes the fat acceptance movement for promoting unhealthy lifestyles and widespread stigma against the phenomenon of fat shaming. Following its YouTube release in September 2015, the video was hotly debated online between those who found her opinions offensive and those who defended it as a work of comedy.

Origin

On September 3rd, 2015, YouTuber Nicole Arbour posted a video titled "Dear Fat People," in which she delivers a monologue about the American obesity epidemic littered with jokes about fat acceptance and body shaming. Within one week, the video gained over 1.3 million views.

Spread

The following day, Arbour reposted the vlog to her official Facebook^[1] page, where it garnered upwards of 20 million views, 194,000 likes, 133,000 shares and 63,000 comments. On September 5th, Vlogger WhitneyWayThore posted a video response which accused Arbour of promoting prejudicial views about fat people (shown below, left). Meanwhile, YouTuber boogie2988 posted a video arguing that fat shaming does more harm than good and noting that overweight people often struggle with mental health and self esteem issues (shown below, right).

That day, YouTube disabled Arbour's channel for violating the site's terms and conditions. On September 6th, Arbour tweeted a screenshot of her disabled YouTube page with the caption "We broke the Internet… With comedy. #censorship." Additionally, Arbour tweeted that she was the first comedian to be censored by YouTube (shown below).^[2]

The same day, YouTuber skagg 3 posted a defense of "Dear Fat People" video, which criticized those who demanded Arbour's removal from YouTube (shown below, left). Meanwhile, YouTuber Philip DeFranco posted a response video, in which he agreed with many of Arbour's points but accused her of expressing her views "like an asshole" (shown below, right).

On September 7th, YouTuber Shane Dawson posted a tweet about the video, which mocked Arbour's hair color (shown below).^[7]

In the coming days, several news sites reported on the online backlash to the video, including UpRoxx,^[8] CNN,^[3] E! Online,^[4] The Guardian,^[9] Salon,^[10] Cosmopolitan,^[11] USA Today,^[12] The Blaze^[13] and BuzzFeed.^[14]

On September 10th, Time^[16] published an interview with Arbour, in which she refused to apologize for the video and defended it as a work of comedy and scoffed at those who found it offensive:

“I find seeing someone’s head being blown off offensive. I find children starving in a country with more than enough food offensive. I find women’s bodies being mutilated for religious purposes, that is offensive to me. But words and satire I don’t find offensive.”

Don't Talk to Irene Firing

On September 10th, 2015, the television news blog Zap2it^[15] published a statement from film director Pat Mills, who announced he had fired Arbour as a choreographer for his upcoming film Don't Talk to Irene. In the statement, Mills revealed that the film is about a teenage girl who is "bullied for being fat" and described "Dear Fat People" as a "cruel fat-shaming video that guises itself about being about health." That day, several news sites reported about the firing, including E! Online,^[17] People,^[18] US Magazine^[19] and The Daily Mail.^[20]

Search Interest

External References