In this section, I will describe how hate and negativity hide in discourses of fat and health.
These emotions address a part of the population considered inferior, problematic and unworthy.
Sarah often complains about how many viewers look at her and decide she is not healthy.
She wonders what kind of effect these commenters seek to make: “do you think that’s gonna make me feel better about myself and it's gonna have a positive effect on me and I'm gonna go and take all of your very educated advice and go make a huge life change” (Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2014)? The truth is that they don’t want her to feel better, they are just pushing their thoughts on her, tying her in a category by strategies of hate and shame. By repeating discourses of hate, they put her in an inferior position and they get stronger out of it.
One of the excuses these negatives comments use is that the vloggers are not healthy, and it’s obvious: “I hear what you're doing and trust me, we know that it's not healthy” (Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2014). The health they are referring to is almost certainly the physical one because mental health or emotional health is not even taken into consideration. In this discourse where fat and health are correlated, people are overweight and unhealthy because they can’t work hard enough to better themselves.
In fact, aside from health reasons, negative comments focus on how being fat is a moral choice. Overweight people don’t accept themselves because they can’t admit it was the accumulation of their own mistakes that made them overweight: "Obesity isn´t a disease. It´s a result of decisions you made in your life. In your case, you made the wrong ones.” (Sarah Rae
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Vargas, April 2014). They are considered a moral failure, their wrongdoings at the same time in plain light for everyone to see and a possible bad influence on others. “If people want to be obese fine but I still don't think we should all be dragged down with them” a viewer comments on YouTube (Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2014). Like other kinds of addicts, fat people can’t control themselves. Because they lack willpower, they end up by eating more than they need, consuming more than they should. They exceed, like any other kind of addict would do: “This video is literally 10 minutes of an addict justifying their addiction and half the comments are supporting her. Is there any other substance abuse where that would happen?” (Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2014).
If fat people make wrong decisions, if they are immoral, then they deserve to be treated with hate, to be shunned, ridiculed and disciplined. “You shame people so that they stop doing a bad thing” (Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2014), a commenter on YouTube explains, pointing at shame as the only strategy that could save them. “Not to compare them morally but that's what our society does to racists. We shame them for being racist so they stop being racist. Being obese is bad, it's bad for the obese individual, it’s bad for their loved ones and its bad for society”
(Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2014). Overweight people are socially unacceptable thus need to be shamed. At one point, they are even compared to racists, harmful for their families and for society. Being obese is thus damaging for everyone and not just the single person. It’s a social problem.
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The Jealous Audience”
Sarah Rae Vargas offers another particular explanation about the negative comments she receives. Not only people are trying to police her body and habits. According to her, some viewers watch her because they are uncomfortable with her happiness and self-assurance: “I have that flaw and she has it too and I can see that she has it so why isn't she feeling the way that I feel? That's not fair”, she explains in False Realities (Sarah Rae Vargas, April 2016), taking the point of view of the hateful audience, “It's not fair that she gets to be happy with herself, it's not fair that she has a confidence to wear you know a swimsuit or a crop top or just be on camera”.
This kind of audience is envious of her and let out their own frustrations through negative and hateful comments. Her opinion finds some evidence thanks to a comment I found in the I Hate
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My Body... |Dear Fat Girl| video (Sarah Rae Vargas, January 2017). The viewer comment that it’s Sarah’s confidence with her overweight body, something that she can’t master, that instigated her negative comments:
I was fat too. I hated myself. In fact I still do. I tried to commit suicide 4 times and unfortunately I failed as you can see. So forgive me for not congratulating people on celebrating their obesity. It ruined my life and the lives of so many women. We always go on about saving women from abuse of men, but so many girls can be saved from self-abuse of obesity.
Obesity ruined her and many other people’s lives. So instead of taking Sarah as a good example of what she might achieve, the commenter takes her anger out on those people they are trying to celebrate a body she can’t accept (Sarah Rae Vargas, January 2017).
The fact that Sarah is not afraid of pointing out at the audience, of critiquing it too, demonstrates again how much she favors transparency. While I argue that Loey and Alex would have never criticized the audience in such a manner, and I’ve never seen them openly commenting on their fans’ shortcomings, Sarah again not only critiques but also show another layer of meaning in the hate she receives. She gives an explanation brought from years of observations. She then informs the audience of how jealousy could be a reason why people might leave hateful messages. As she has done when pointing out at the fakeness of social media’s images, here Sarah again educates her followers in understanding not only the mechanism of YouTube but also each other.
While LoeyLane and Learningtobefearless have inside conflicts discovered and discussed by the audience, Sarah is unsatisfied with some issues within the audience and she digs them out and discusses them in her videos for her followers' benefit.
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