On February 20th, wonderful Nicole Arbour came out with her video, "Dear Fat People 2: The Second Helping". Yuck. If you didn't see her first video about fat people or this one, consider yourself lucky. As much as I don't want to promote the monster that is Nicole, here's the video in case you're as curious as I was:

The video is bigoted, offensive, and really, really unfunny. But the point of this article isn't to talk about how much I hate Nicole Arbour (which I do with a burning passion). We need to talk about the overall mindset that fat people are gross, and really just need to stop eating so many damn cookies.

In November 2014, I was depressed, lonely, and just got put on a new antidepressant. I was in Kmart with my mom when I realized I had a small stretch mark on my stomach. I texted my girlfriend, blaming her for maybe scratching my stomach by accident. But the more I looked at it, the more I realized that this was a mark that was here to stay.

I cried all the way home from Kmart, as my mother looked at me in utter confusion. She didn't understand why it bothered me so much, or why I felt like the weight I gained would never leave.

As the weeks passed, the stretch marks on my stomach and arms grew longer and redder until I felt consumed by them. As minuscule as stretch marks may seem, I felt completely defined by them and was ashamed of my body more than ever before.

So why did I gain 20 pounds in a few months span, which in turn gave me horrible stretch marks? Is it because I'm a fat cow that needs to stop eating altogether?

Well no Nicole Arbour, no. I was brand new to college, and I absolutely hated it. I was in the first relationship of my life which confused and stressed me at times. I had no friends. I was suicidal. I was on a new medication which possibly made me gain weight and made me hallucinate (yes, hallucinate..that'll be another article). There are so many reasons why I gained 20 pounds from September to November of 2014, and none of them are just that I'm gross and need to gain self-control.

The mindset that fat or overweight people simply gain weight because they're lazy is absolutely ridiculous. In my experience, my weight gain was much more emotional than physical, and I'm sure others who have gained unwanted weight feel the same way.

So making a video about how nasty fat people are will NOT help them, I can promise you that. The worse I felt about myself, the more I ate and the less exercise I did because I couldn't get out of bed. For me, if I felt bad about myself, I wanted to harm your body even more, or I just became apathetic to the fact that I was becoming less healthy.

Once Spring of 2015 came, I started to feel less self-conscious of my stretch marks and of my body in general. I started watching body positive Youtube videos and started listening when my girlfriend said my body was beautiful. This boost in self-confidence made me want to exercise and eat well, and I ended up losing most of the weight I had gained previously. If I had watched videos like Nicole's or listened to people who say only skinny is beautiful, I never would have had the motivation to better myself.

I wanted to write this article to tell whoever's out there that if you feel fat, or if you have stretch marks or cellulite or whatever, you're beautiful. And if you don't want to change your body that's perfectly okay and you shouldn't have to! But if you are looking to motivate yourself to become healthier, surround yourself with positivity, because videos like Nicole's will just make you despise your own body, and no one deserves that.