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A Complete History of Fat-Shaming Nicole Arbour's 'Dear Fat People' Saga

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | September 11, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | September 11, 2015 |


Nicole Arbour is a “YouTube Star,” which is a thing now guys, so you have to get used to it. She also used to choreograph for the Toronto Argonauts cheerleaders. Earlier this week, Arbour released a video called “Dear Fat People.” It’s thesis was this: “You’re disgusting, lose some weight, because you’re obesity bothers me.” It was mean-spirited and cruel, but Arbour tried to pass it off as a kind of YouTube PSA: Her intention was literally to fat-shame people into losing weight.

It backfired spectacularly.

In fact, Arbour not only alienated many of her YouTube fans, she pissed off other YouTube stars and collaborators, like Grace Helbig, who broke character and responded in a very heartfelt way:

Grace Helbig is my new favorite YouTube star.

Twitter, as you might imagine, went crazy, with people both attacking and defending Nicole Arbour. Trust me, you don’t want to see the Tweets defending her.

At one point, the complaints about the video got so out of control that YouTube briefly suspended her account. Arbour considered that some kind of victory:

Arbour also has this video, where she goes off on PC culture. If you didn’t hate her before, you’ll hate her after this.

MOST OFFENSIVE VIDEO EVER!

MOST OFFENSIVE VIDEO ON THE INTERNET!

Posted by Nicole Arbour on Thursday, August 20, 2015

Yesterday, Arbour was fired from a job because of the fat-shaming video. Arbour had been hired to choreograph dance scenes for a anti-bulling movie about a 16-year-old dreams of being a cheerleader but was constantly being bullied because she’s overweight.

The director of that movie explained to Zap2It why he fired Arbor:

”[‘Dear Fat People’] is an unfunny and cruel fat-shaming video that guises itself about being about ‘health’. It’s fat phobic and awful. It went on for over for six minutes. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I was so upset I was shaking like Shelley DuVall in the ‘The Shining’.”

Is that comeuppance? It doesn’t seem that Arbour was too shaken up about it.

So, what’s the lesson here? I’m not sure, but I do look forward to Nicole Arbour’s career peak: A scene in Sharknado 5 in which she’s smashed by a flying shark and never seen or heard from again.