Dani Strehle
Staff Writer
Alex Day is a popular English musician and YouTube wonder-kid. Wikipedia states that: “Day is credited with pioneering a new style of releasing and distributing music to his YouTube channel, nerimon, has received more than 600,000 subscribers and over 100 million views.” Clearly people know who this guy is. So when he releases a video via YouTube targeting chubby fangirls and blind guys, people are going to see it. A lot of people, it turns out. A lot of irate people.
Day trotted in front of his webcam to recap his time at the London MCM Expo, a multi-genre fan convention. His recap quickly veered from a general overview of the event and his description of a girl dressed up as the Firefox’s desktop icon into a diatribe concerning event-goers’ costumes.
“…If I had to, if I had to criticize, a lot of cosplayers don’t dress their size. If you are a chubbier person, there are a lot of chubby characters in fandoms. Embrace it, you know? Dress up like characters that are the size you are. You can be the Hulk, you can be Jabba the Hut. Um, Merida from Brave.”
Well, Alex, I don’t know what your eyes were peeping, but I’ve seen Brave, several times. Merida is decidedly not chubby. And thank you so very much for giving us chubs a list of acceptable costumes. Really, what would we do without you? I know I’ve personally always dreamed of dressing up like the grotesque, amorphous, slug-like antagonist, Jabba the Hut. The boys will really come running then, won’t they?
Oh yeah. Sexy doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Day continues with his spiel and explains why curvy people should just do what he says and shut up about it already:
“I saw this girl, I’d never met her, I didn’t say anything to her, I just saw her from across the way. She was dressed as Misty from Pokemon so she had like the dungarees sort of strapped ‘round her and she’s carrying a Togepi and she looked naked and I thought, “why are you doing that to everyone?” Where as she could have gone as just the Togepi! She’d have still been representing the fandom then! That’s the thing about MCM, it’s not about who you are, it’s not about if you’re famous or not, it’s about who can you be? What is your costume? How good is it? If you have an amazing costume, everyone will want to take pictures with you. You will be the star of MCM. And another example, I saw a blind guy walking around with a dog, wasn’t even dressed as Dare Devil. No effort. He wouldn’t even have known he was dressed as Dare Devil if someone had just…(sigh). People are so lazy. Anyway, I had a good time.”
Day is claiming that this video was meant to be satirical. I am calling bullshit on that one. That sounds like a pathetic excuse to justify what has incited enormous backlash. As of 3:30 p.m. today, Eastern Standard Time, this video has been viewed 133,057 times. It currently has 16,406 “thumbs down,” or negative, ratings. There are also a TON of response videos chastising Day for his outspoken opinion. Not everyone found this video offensive, though, as there are also 6,264 “thumbs up,” or positive, ratings.
Here are my thoughts on the ordeal: clearly everybody is entitled to their own opinions. That’s the brilliant thing about living in free countries. But on the flipside of that, this also entitles everyone to wear whatever the hell he or she wants. And if you can’t dress up and pretend to be someone else at a Comic Con type event, then where can you? If you don’t want to look at a voluptuous woman dressed as a skinny character, then avert your eyes. Don’t take it YouTube like a coward. At least she had the gumption to dress up, and clearly, she was in no way concerned about what others thought about her. And really, Alex? Calling a blind guy lazy because he didn’t dress up as Dare Devil? Did it ever occur to you that he probably has, well, NO IDEA what Dare Devil looks like? Or maybe, like YOU, he simply chose not to dress up. Satire or not, maybe next time you’ll be a little bit more cautious when taking to YouTube to air your disgust.
What are your thoughts? Take a look at the video below and let us know:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwV5EB0VAlI]
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