"Dear Fat People" YouTuber Is Back With Thoughts on SI's Swimsuit Issue
Nicole Arbour became Internet-famous (intentionally, she says!) last year when she released "Dear Fat People," a six-minute rant claiming fat-shaming was not real and that anyone offended by her comments was too politically correct. Though she received plenty of hate for it, Arbour released a follow-up video on Feb. 20 called "Dear Fat People 2: The Second Helping."
This time, Arbour called out the "plus-size girl in [the] sports magazine," presumably Ashley Graham, one of the rookie models in this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. "Is she pretty? Totally," Arbour said. "But Sports Illustrated swimsuit models are the mecca of physical perfection when it comes to modeling."
It's not the model's size she said she has a problem with, it's that she's "representing 'real women,' and 'natural curves,' and a 'natural body.' But she's Photoshopped to fuck in all her photos." Graham told Access Hollywood earlier this month "[The Sports Illustrated editors] did not retouch me. They did not take out things. They didn't reshape my body in any way, shape or form."
"That's like the CEO of PETA eating meat. Hashtag #BodyPositivity is full of it," Arbour continued. She spent the remainder of the video elaborating it's not the model she has a problem with, but that she believes Sports Illustrated chose different-sized models to cause controversy and that the model chooses to maintain her weight so she could book "plus-size" modeling jobs.
Though Graham hasn't responded to Arbour's most recent video, she told E! in September 2015 she found "the subject matter [of the first 'Dear Fat People' video] is disgusting" considering "women already have so much that they have to go through in their day-to-day."
Arbour is right about one thing: These videos make a lot of people mad. It's kind of hard to justify calling a bunch of people names and denouncing everything they stand for when you've admitted your accusations were purposely meant to go viral. You could just accept the fact that people are finally learning to be proud of how their bodies look regardless of what other people say instead of tearing them to shreds for finally getting to that point instead :).
Follow Tess on Twitter.
