By Hannah Twery, contributor
Let me start off by saying you better be lucky that my editor won’t let me publish the string of expletives that I, and most of the people who saw your disgustingly insensitive fat-shaming video, would just love to call you. However, I’m pretty sure the names “human pile of steaming garbage” and “ignorant windbag” will be publishable and equally acceptable in this situation.
The first time I heard that trash you spewed in your “Dear Fat People” video I thought I was going to rupture an artery because I was so angry, and I’m sure many others felt the same way. Shaming and bullying people for their weight, which is often an issue someone can’t help, is like me shaming you for having bad eyebrows— shallow and none of my business.
A lot of people, such as myself, are on medications like birth control, that either hinder or completely obliterate their ability to lose weight. Sometimes these factors flat-out cause people to gain weight, and that really sucks. And sometimes people just weigh more than you do. You essentially maintain that people who are obese need to be shamed into not eating so they can lose weight. Do you know how many studies are floating around the internet state that starving yourself is unhealthy (duh) and can actually lead to weight gain?
Something that was equally revolting as your video diary of verbal diarrhea is the way that you handled the backlash. Your appearance on The View was just … wow. The first thing I noticed was that you made a bold and ill-advised decision to wear a dress with an x-ray of a skeleton on it during your interview. I don’t know if you forgot that you were going on national television to talk about a video that frequently suggests that fat people should just starve in order to shave off weight or if you’re really that insensitive. That’s some real pro-ana level crap. As someone that is a survivor of anorexia, hearing the phrase, “You should starve yourself,” triggers a voice in the back of my head that says, “Well boy howdy, maybe I should just starve myself.” I’m sure the same goes for others that are either currently struggling with an eating disorder or were previous sufferers.
Additionally, fat shaming can remind people with an eating disorder history that to the general public, beauty equals being skinny, a reminder that isn’t healthy whatsoever when one is trying to recover or stay in recovery. The even more upsetting thing is that you tried to play off this whole thing as a joke. You said it was satire, which clearly it’s not. Yeah, you were trying to be funny while being offensive but executed it as well as a 12-year-old boy talking about boobs. Honey, “South Park” is satire. When Trey Parker and Matt Stone sit down to write their offensive jokes, they’re not bullying people, like you did in your video. They’re hinting at social issues that they’re well informed about, but you took major shots in the dark on a subject you clearly don’t know about. Where “South Park” and shows in the same vein make jokes about people and demographics, it’s to explain something ridiculous in our culture. You’re just calling people “moral failures” based on their weight with no substance to your points. Your video was just an ill-informed idiot masquerading as a comedian.
Speaking of which, after you so voraciously defended yourself, you tried to turn all of this around to say that nobody got your video because you’re a girl and not a man like most comedians. No, baby, we understood your video and we’d probably be saying the same thing about him. Just because you’re blonde and skinny does not automatically grant you access to broadcast whatever words happen to fall out of your mouth, especially since they sound like those of an intoxicated frat brother.
Now that you have nothing to do since you’ve been dropped from all of your endorsement deals, why don’t you take some time to educate yourself and make an attempt at actual comedy instead of taking cheap shots that were last heard on the back of my school bus in middle school.
