Thousands want worryingly thin YouTuber banned amid claims she promotes anorexia
Thousands have signed a petition to ban a vlogger from YouTube amid claims she promotes anorexia to teenage fans who thrive on images of her extremely thin body.
YouTuber Eugenia Cooney is a New York based video blogger with almost 1 million followers and as her weight drops, her following grows.
An online petition was created earlier this month that called for the 22-year-old to be temporarily banned from YouTube because her thinness was “triggering her fan base.”
The main petition, which addressed YouTube and Google to take her channel down, gained more than 11,100 signatures before it was deleted.
“She may not be intentionally influencing her viewers, but showing more than 50% of her body in her videos and pictures (is) not helping girls with Anorexia or any eating disorder,” the petition read.
Cooney's fan base consists of primarily 12 to 21 year olds, an age group that is particularly vulnerable to the images that she posts online.
She is known to post videos with stirring titles such as, “I’m not dead” and “How to ratchetly twerk", along with thumbnails featuring her emaciated frame on full view.
Cooney has denied having an eating disorder and has insisted that she doesn’t understand how she could be influencing her followers in a video defending herself and addressing the criticism.
“Some people are saying I’m a ‘bad influence on girls’ and I just want you guys to know that I’ve never tried to be a bad influence on YouTube,” she said in a video.
“I would never want to do that.
"I would never tell anybody to try to lose weight, or to try to change the way they look, or to look like me or anything like that.
“I would never tell anybody to do that because I just think that everybody should be themselves and do what makes them happy and be happy with themselves.”
"I'm really sorry, I seriously never mean to do that. It kind of sucks that so many people on the internet feel like I'm a really bad person."
Erin Hillard, program manager of the University of Notre Dame’s Body Image and Eating Disorder Lab, said Cooney may not be deliberately promoting her lifestyle as achievable but claimed her videos may have a negative impact on girls who may be struggling with body image issues.
“We know that media images have the power to influence girls’ eating behaviors and feelings about their body, and it does seem as though YouTube is more and more becoming another form of media that pushes products and lifestyles on young girl," Ms Hillard told Yahoo US Beauty.
"The life of a YouTube celebrity is often presented as very glamorous and fabulous, and young girls may look up to that and think that Eugenia’s appearance is something they should be striving for to achieve her level of success."
The vlogger gained more than 200,000 subscribers over the past three months.
Do you need help or support with an eating disorder? Ring The Butterfly Foundation's national support line on: 1800 33 4673 (1800 ED HOPE).
