Vlogger Quits Lucrative Job Because of Body Shaming
Anna Saccone was a pretty successful YouTube vlogger. Three times a week she posted videos about everything from baking, babies, and health to beauty and fashion — and she had more than a million subscribers. About a month ago, she gave it all up.
On Monday, she posted the first video since her absence explaining why she quit the popular social platform.
“I would say I’m generally a strong-ish person, like, I can handle a lot,” she says to start the video. “I choose to put myself out there, I choose to put my life out there … and I know that not everyone is going to like me. But when things aren’t going well in your life, when something big and dramatic happens, [the criticisms and negativity] are just a hundred times worse.”
Saccone explains that after having a miscarriage, she tried to turn a negative into a positive by hiring a personal trainer and making videos of her getting back in shape. But she was shocked by the flood of negativity she encountered.
“People said I was obese. They even made a hashtag, ‘saveobeseanna’ … I know it shouldn’t matter, but it did.”
She then goes on to discuss the struggle she’s had with body image and bulimia since she was 18. At the time, her dad had just been diagnosed with cancer and she felt like everything in her life was completely out of her control. Food was the one thing she could control. By the time she turned 20, she was making herself sick around five times a day, and the death of her dad only made matters worse.
When she became pregnant with her first child, things changed, and she realized it was time to be healthy and think of the baby. The same thing happened when she got pregnant the second time. But when the fat shaming comments started rolling in after her miscarriage, she could feel her old habits beginning to resurface.
“No matter how I felt about myself and no matter how much work I had done on my mental health and my body image, sometimes when you’re at your weakest, which I was after miscarrying, sometimes those comments will just get to you and the eating disorder voice will start saying things like, ‘Oh, maybe they have a point.’ So that’s when I knew I just had to stop.”
The video already has 1.2 million views and over 18,000 comments, most supporting the vlogger for speaking out.
