Comedian Nicole Arbour's 'Fat-Shaming' Rant Goes Down Like A Lead Balloon

Comedian's 'Fat-Shaming' Rant Goes Down Like A Lead Balloon

"Fat-shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up."

This is the message that one comedian sent out to the masses in a video which saw her account temporarily suspended.

Nicole Arbour uploaded the six-minute YouTube video titled "Dear Fat People" on 3 September, which - as you can imagine - caused mass outrage on social media.

The video, which generated nearly half a million views before it was taken down, sees Arbour tear into people who are overweight in what has been labelled blatant "bullying".

After her account was temporarily suspended (it was taken down on 5 September and reinstated a day later), Arbour took to Twitter to protest against the action and labelled herself "the first comedian in the history of YouTube to be censored".

The video has since been put back up and has had over one million views.

YouTubers such as Whitney Thore (of Fat Girl Dancing fame) and Grace Helbig have taken action against Arbour's rant by posting response videos.

"Fat shaming is a thing. It's a really big thing," says Whitney Thore. "It is the really nasty spawn of a larger problem called body-shaming which I'm sure everyone on the planet - especially women - has experienced."

"The next time you see a fat person, you don't know whether that person has a medical condition that caused them to gain weight," she says. "You don't know their mother just died. You don't know if they're depressed or suicidal or if they just lost 100 pounds. You don't know."

Meanwhile YouTuber Grace Helbig, who has struggled with negative body image in the past, says the video left her feeling very angry.

"I couldn't stop feeling that way and I couldn't stop thinking about it and I couldn't fall asleep," she says. "I literally stayed up all night writing notes about how the video made me feel - thinking that if I wrote them down that I'd get them out of my system."

"I feel like I have to say something about it, because it sucks," she adds.

"Nicole, I don't know you at all, but you seem really smart and like you have comedic timing," says Helbig, who is also a comedian. "I was just bummed that someone who is smart and funny would speak about weight that way.

"I was really triggered by that video unexpectedly. I've had my own issues with body image in the past, some really dark personal struggles that I have really, really worked on."

She adds: "When you tell someone to stop being fat... What you're really saying is 'stop being a human being, stop having emotional issues, stop, just stop, because it's bothering me. I'm being affected by your pain'."

Thore and Helbig aren't the only people to take issue with the "fat-shaming" post.

Hundreds of people, including model Tess Holliday, have since taken to Twitter to air their disgust at Arbour's rant.

Arbour has since revealed that she isn't going to apologise for the video. She told Time: "I feel it’s really important that we make fun of everybody.

"I think [what] brings us together and unites us as people is that we can poke fun at all of us."

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