Nicole Arbour: YouTube star’s Dear Fat People ‘fat shaming’ video condemned by Tess Holliday and plus size stars

The comedian joked about shaming overweight people so they lose weight

Nicole Arbour's video encouraged fat shaming

A YouTube star has drawn fierce criticism for a video where she claimed fat-shaming is “made up by fat people”.

Nicole Arbour, a Vlogger and comedian, prompted outrage with her six minute "fat-shaming" video, ‘Dear Fat People’, which criticised overweight people for claiming they are discriminated against.

"Fat-shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up. If we offend you so much that you lose weight, I'm OK with that. You are killing yourself," she told her viewers.

“'Yeah, but I couldn’t fit into a store. That’s discrimination'. Uh no. That means you are too fat, and you should stop eating. Are you gonna tell the doctor that they are being mean, and fat shaming you, when you have f**king heart disease?

“If we offend you so much that you lose weight I’m ok with that. Yep, I’ll sleep at night.”

Her video, which was watched over 21 million times before being taken down, was blasted by plus size models including Tess Holliday, who urged her followers to boycott the video. “Fat shaming doesn’t save lives, it kills them,” she wrote on Twitter.

"I refuse to watch clickbait like that. She doesn't deserve our clicks or our energy. Our existence doesn't need to be "proved" or "validated". We need to continue to hold our heads high. Plus, a life well lived is the best revenge."

Holliday also rallied against ‘Project Harpoon’ accounts sharing images of women that were manipulated to make them look slimmer. They were shut down by Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.

Whitney Way Thore, who appears on TLC show My Big Fat Fabulous Life, issued her own YouTube video in response to Arbour’s rant.

"Fat-shaming is a thing; it's a really big thing, no pun intended," Thore says. "It is the really nasty spawn of a larger parent problem called body-shaming, which I'm fairly certain everyone on the planet, especially women, has experienced."

Arbour, who says her video was satire, claimed she was the first comedian in the history to be censored by YouTube when her account was shut down. Her account has since been restored and all of the videos, including her ‘Dear Fat People’ video, are now available online.

The Independent understands her account was temporarily taken down after being flagged by YouTube users.

Some voiced their support for Arbour by arguing that her material was comedy and should not be censored.

YouTube said in a statement: "With over 400 hours of video uploaded a minute, we don't comment on individual videos or channels. However, in cases where a channel or video is incorrectly flagged by the community and subsequently removed, we work quickly to reinstate it."