Eugenia Cooney, an extremely thin vlogger, has defended herself after more than 18,000 people signed a petition to have her videos removed from YouTube. The petition claims she must seek medical help and that she is a bad influence for teenagers who follow her on social media and want to look like her. The 22-year-old girl, who has nearly a million subscribers on YouTube, is being attacked for allegedly promoting anorexia.
From Greenwich, Connecticut, Cooney has proclaimed itself as emo and claimed she does not suffer an eating disorder, The Daily Mail reported. She told her followers that she has never encouraged anyone to try to look like her, but those signing the petition believe she promotes her worryingly thin image by showing at least 50 percent of her body on her YouTube channel.
She told Twitter fans Friday that it is one thing for people to be attacking her for the way she looks, but one entirely different is for them to attack her friends and those who stick up for her. That makes her feel terrible, she said. In a separate tweet, Cooney apologized to those who are angry at her even though she has no intentions to harm anyone and ask them not to attack others.
In a YouTube video she posted two weeks ago, she spoke about the very intense criticism.
“Some people are saying I’m like a bad influence on girls. I just want you guys to know like I have seriously never have tried to be a bad influence on YouTube or to influence anyone badly. I would never want to do that. I have never told anyone to try to like lose weight or to try to like change the way they look or to look like me,” Cooney expressed.
A woman signing the Change.org petition claimed her 12-year-old cousin was receiving care after having lost 17lbs because she wanted her appearance to be like Eugenia’s. Another person said the girl has gotten worse since the day she started posting videos and that she appears to be harming herself to show young girls that it is just fine to be suffering from an eating disorder.
Bullies vs. fans
Her channel is filled with mean comments from people who condemn the way she looks. While some are worried and ask her to seek medical help, others have told her she must start eating, or she will die soon. Some others leave their comments to make fun of Eugenia by comparing her legs with chairs’ and saying they can see her bones through her skin.
Other viewers sarcastically say she is fat and that she should lose some weight. On the other hand, some Twitter and Facebook users have expressed their desire to be her size and one person even asked her how many times they needed to throw up a day to have her appearance.
The vlogger joined YouTube in 2013 after leaving school and receives financial support from some of her nearly 900,000 fans. She is also active on Instagram, where she has more than 430,000 followers, and on Twitter with 115,000 fans.
Her content varies from hair and make-up to wardrobe advice, and her mom often appears helping her with her outfit. According to a post by the Daily Mail, she lives with her parents in New York.
Source: Daily Mail
This is how I feel about it. She just makes videos. If someone likes the way she looks and wants to look like her, that’s on them. She’s not asking anyone to be like her.
We make people role models. They don’t do that themselves, so we have no right to try to influence how they live their lives just because some of us look up to them. Who we look up to is a choice we made and should have no influence on their lives.
Isnt this just another form of body shaming?