YouTube star Cassey Ho reaches millions of people everyday with her short, fun fitness videos.
But the 28-year-old creator of the YouTube workout channel Blogilates
keeps receiving vicious comments about her weight and appearance.
Despite the fact that she knew they were coming from negative places,
she says the mean comments affect her much more than the positive words
from fans.
“It’s something that’s been eating away at me for a while now,” she said in a video about body shaming and eating disorders last week. “The hatred and the mean comments that have been swirling around lately, I can’t shake it off.”

Ho even admitted some of the hateful words had made her cry and feel like a piece of meat.
So she decided to fight back by making a poignant video about how it felt for her to see what she would look like with the "perfect" body.
In
the video, Ho has just gotten back from a work out. Pleased with
herself, she takes a selfie, but is immediately inundated with rude
comments about her weight and appearance.
Surrounded by
voices telling her to change, Ho digitally shaves inches from her
thighs and abs, increases her bra size, and even changes her eye color
to please commenters.
After Ho has virtually edited herself, she takes another snap in the
mirror — but she remains upset with how she looks, insinuating that
changing yourself for other people will not make you happy.
She created the video with help from a body double, fellow YouTube
star Arika Sato. She believes that after all of the days of shooting,
visual effects, weeks of editing, and everything else it took to create
the short film, it was worth it.
“I grew up being a little bit
overweight and I fought to have the body and the life that I have
today,” Ho told her followers in an earlier video about the negativity.
“All of us come with a backstory, and that’s why I feel like you
shouldn’t judge people because you never know where they’re coming from,
slash you shouldn’t judge people by how they look.”
So far, the video has been viewed by 1.2 million people, and many of
her fans and commenters have praised Ho for sharing her body image
struggle, calling her inspiring and telling her to ignore the haters.
But it hasn’t all been positive. To promote her video, Ho had shared an edited snapshot of a “perfect” body
on her Instagram and was shocked to see many of the comments were
either still extremely negative or else praising her for looking
“amazing.”
“
I wanted to post again because there was a weird phenomenon that
happened when I posted this Photoshopped picture,” Ho said on her
Instagram. “On the very same photo, I got some people praising me and
others degrading me. What worries me is this: 1. That some people think
this is real and that it should be ‘goals.’ 2. That some people still
think it's not good enough.”
“It's tough knowing what's real and what's not when magazine covers and music videos are Photoshopped (yes, music videos), Instagram pics are Photoshopped, and so many women are getting surgery,” she continued. “How are we to know what kind of beauty can be naturally achieved when everything around us is so deceiving?”
“It's tough knowing what's real and what's not when magazine covers and music videos are Photoshopped (yes, music videos), Instagram pics are Photoshopped, and so many women are getting surgery,” she continued. “How are we to know what kind of beauty can be naturally achieved when everything around us is so deceiving?”
But of the nearly
6,000 comments on the YouTube video, the vast majority are people
thanking the Blogilates creator for her honesty.
“ This is actually pretty amazing,” said one commenter.
“There are lots of things I would change. But it took me years to know
the changes I want to make are based on health, self respect, and self
love. I don't want perfection. Nor do I want the societal standard of
beauty. I just want to be healthy. I already love myself.”
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