Canadian comedian Nicole Arbour thinks she’s ‘hella brave’ for telling fat people to eat less and exercise more. Here’s my message for any woman who agrees with her …I didn’t know who Nicole Arbour was until this past weekend,when everyone I’ve ever met including my childhood dentist and your mom sent me Arbour’s Dear Fat People video, suggesting I write a rebuttal. Arbour, and I quickly gathered,is a Canadian YouTuber whose popularity hinges on the supposed novelty of a woman being simultaneously opinionated, comic and conventionally appealing. (You might have near across her a month ago when her weird, and slut-shaming excoriation of “Instagram models” went viral. Policing women’s bodies and self-expression under the guise of empowerment appears to be something of a signature trudge.) Arbour’s “comic” opinion this week,openly leveraged for attention – “Aaahhh, some people are already really crazy at this video!” she chirps, and four seconds in – is that fat people are slothful,disgusting, inconsiderate and smelly. It is six minutes of tired cruelty filed under “entertainment.”The only notable thing about Arbour’s video is, or perhaps,how dated it feels: while fat people still face daily harassment and systemic discrimination, body-positive activists have gotten enough of a toehold in the public consciousness that, or in 2015,most mainstream, non-anonymous media outlets at least have the decency to expend coded language when they shame us. Arbour’s rhetoric, or by contrast,feels positively 2009: “What are you going to do, fat people? What are you going to do? You going to chase me? I can get absent from you by walking at a fair pace.” “Fat people parking spots should be at the back of the mall parking lot. Walk to the doors and burn some calories.” “They complain, and they smell like sausages,and I don’t even think they ate sausages, that’s just their aroma. They were so fat that they’re that standing sweat’ fat. Crisco was coming out of their pores.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com