A model has responded to a beauty influencer who shamed her weight and said those who are morbidly obese ‘should never be seen as attractive’.
Model La’Shaunae Steward, from South Carolina, called out Xiaxue – real name Wendy Cheng – for her ‘fatphobic’ comments on social media, after the latter posted a series of Instagram stories earlier this week.
The influencer shared a number of pictures of Steward to her page, which has more than 602,000 followers, alongside captions which called the model ‘disgusting’ and ‘unattractive’.
Cheng said that, while it is one thing to be ‘chubby or fat’, Steward’s weight was ‘way past that’, describing the model as ‘morbidly obese’.
She wrote:
Most morbidly obese people don’t live past 40. They gorge themselves with 30 burgers a day and when they inevitably get a clogged artery or diabetes taxpayers have to help foot their medical bills when their health conditions are entirely caused by their irresponsible behaviour. Disgusting.
The morbidly obese (like this woman) should never be seen as attractive because death and disease isn’t attractive full stop. Irresponsibility isn’t attractive. Even when they die [they] need 3 pple [sic] to carry the corpse.
F*cking stop glorifying this shit @instagram shame on you.
The influencer later shared another photo of the model sat on a bed, writing alongside the nauseated face emoji: ‘Follower sent me this in response to my story and I had to see it so you have to as well.’
Steward has since responded to the horrific comments, sharing Cheng’s posts on Twitter and writing:
Why are thin people this obsessed with letting me know indirectly they think im [sic] unattractive to them therefore im [sic] not worthy of love, a career, being visible, and literally telling me the age im [sic] going to die? Ok miss cleo [sic]
The model later said she ‘doesn’t owe [her] weight loss to anyone’, adding: ‘I don’t owe anyone an explanation for why I’m fat or don’t exercise!! I don’t have to prove my health!!!’
Following her comments, Cheng has been criticised by many who have called her comments ‘fatphobic’, with one person writing: ‘What is the point of using your followers to belittle and humiliate someone because of their appearance? So rude and uncalled for. Irresponsible and pointless af.’
Another person said: ‘xiaxue on IG is disgustingly #fatphobic and if you follow her, please stay away from me,’ while one wrote: ‘I see love in that girl but hate in xiaxue. Please report this fatphobic person she’s disgusting.’
Hopefully La’Shaunae has a strong support system that will help her move past these shameful comments, and know she’s so much more than one person’s awful opinion.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).