Eugenia Cooney, a 22-year-old YouTube vlogger, is under serious fire for what people are considering “promoting an unhealthy lifestyle.”
Cooney is alarmingly thin – terrifyingly, upsettingly skinny – and though a Change.org petition had over 15k signatures on it, there a few things wrong here.
First, Cooney may or may not be anorexic.
If she is, that is, unfortunately her problem, and not our problem to judge her.
Second, what if Cooney is dying from some kind of terrible disease, but she’s, instead, decided to keep it to herself?
Third, if we banned all of the “unhealthy behavior” on YouTube and other platforms, there’d be no overweight people on the internet, no smokers, no drinkers, no drug-takers … the list goes on and on.
The petition on Change.org reads, “Eugenia Cooney is a big YouTuber. THOUSANDS of people notice she clearly has an eating disorder by her physical features.”
“These THOUSANDS of people tell her to get help. Eugenia doesn’t get help for herself because people with eating disorders do not look at their bodies the way healthier people do,” it continued.
“This effect of her diet is not only giving her a high chance of death, but will also encourage her young viewers to look up to Eugenia and follow in her footsteps.”
“Please sign this petition to help save lives,” it read.
“I deeply care about this loving girl who has potential to be a real role model and [has] potential to be healthy.”
“I know other people out there [agree] that Eugenia needs help. Many people die from an eating disorder every day,” the petition read grimly.
“It could be Eugenia or one of her followers.”
The petition’s author claimed that the petition wasn’t designed to “hurt” or “bring down” Cooney, but to “save her.”
The first petition, titled, “Temporarily ban Eugenia Cooney Off of YouTube” was pulled down, but prior to its demise, had over 15k supporters.
A new petition was created, and this new one now has close to 400 at the time of this writing.
Yeah, Cooney is thin.
She really is unhealthy-looking. We get it.
Eugenia tweeted, “I’m really sorry to the people who want me banned of of YouTube.”
“I’m really not trying to do anything wrong,” she said.
She wasn’t done there, though.
“I just don’t really think it is right to try to get people banned off of YouTube unless they’ve done something really bad.”
Cooney also doesn’t think she needs any help, though, to be fair.
In a YouTube video, she talked about her weight, and said, “I’m just kind of naturally like that, I guess.”
“There isn’t really a reason.”
Girl, just be well.
And people, stop making assumptions about something that may or may not be correct, all right?
