After posting the controversial video titled, âDear Fat People,â Nicole Arbour not only received backlash from other comedians and YouTube personalities, as well as celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen, but it also cost the comedian a job. Arbour, who had previously worked with the Toronto Argonauts Cheerleaders, was hired to choreograph scenes for an anti-bullying, dance film called Donât Talk to Irene. She has since been fired from the gig.
In a statement to Zap2it, Donât Talk to Irene director Pat Mills talked about his decision to work with Arbour. âWe met with a woman who not only did traditional dance choreography, but was a cheerleader as well,â explained Mills. âShe was fun and nice and had a lot of energy.â Mills was planning to meet with Arbour to brainstorm scenes, until he watched the fat-phobic video. âI saw something on the Internet that made me never want to see her again,â he said.
Mills explained that bulliesâlike Arbourâwere the reason he was making the film:
âItâs a body-positive teen dance movie set in a retirement home,â Mills says of the plot. âItâs about a 16-year-old girl who dreams of being a cheerleader, but she is constantly bullied for being fat. She learns that she doesnât have to change anything about herself to be awesome because she already is.â
â[âDear Fat Peopleâ] is an unfunny and cruel fat-shaming video that guises itself about being about âhealthâ,â Mills says of the clip. âItâs 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 âThe Shiningâ.â
Meanwhile, Arbour hasnât apologized for her video, which includes the kind of dated humor typically found in â80s summer camp comedies: âThey complain, and they smell like sausages, and I donât even think they ate sausages, thatâs just their aroma. They were so fat that theyâre that âstanding sweatâ fat. Crisco was coming out of their pores.â In an interview with Time, she defended her tirade, describing it as satire. âI feel itâs really important that we make fun of everybody,â she said. âI think [what] brings us together and unites us as people is that we can poke fun at all of us.â
She also appears to be denying any involvement in Millsâs film, according to this recent tweet. Following the incident, Arbourâs YouTube channel was temporarily removed, with some accusing the comedian of deleting the channel herself to gain publicity. YouTube said the channel was mistakenly suspended and reinstated it soon after.
Contact the author at marie.lodi@jezebel.com.
Image via YouTube.
