In a society where shaming on the basis of body size is considered a mere joke, it continues to affect the well-being of victims. While some doesn’t raise their voice, a few of them do.
Just like these two plus-size models, Ella Halikas and Alexa McCoy, who recently had an appalling encounter with a bouncer outside one nightclub in Los Angeles.
The models, who were about to enter The Highlight Room, were stopped by the bouncer due to their body sizes. Alexa had invited Ella to join her group of 12 to 15 girls. However, when the former begin to step inside after the whole squad, the bouncer checked her “up and down”, put the rope down and said: “Not tonight”.
Ella shared their experiences of being fat-shamed for entering in the club with Alexa and posted its videos on her Instagram handle. “The promoter starts letting in the whole group of girls and right when it gets to me, the bouncer puts the rope in front, looks me up and down, and says, ‘Yeah, not tonight,'” Alexa says in the viral video.
Despite Alexa informing the bouncer that she is a part of the squad that he has already let in, she was denied entry in the club. When Ella approach the bouncer, she was told something similar. “I was like, ‘What do you mean not tonight? I’m so confused.’…He wouldn’t give us an answer, we didn’t know why,” Ella added.
“These people were looking at us like we were scum of the earth,” both can be seen saying in the second clip.
While the parent company of the nightclub removed the bouncer, Ella called it a “temporary fix”.
“I believe that removing the bouncer is just like removing a Band-Aid. It’s a temporary fix to a bigger issue,” she told Buzzfeed.
The 25-year-old plus-size model also demanded new policies and sensitivity training for bouncers outside nightclubs.
“I would love to see new policies enforced at nightclubs, and possibly new sensitivity training for bouncers to complete in order to do their jobs successfully. This conversation is important to me — to ensure that no one else feels the way we did that night,” Ella added.
Here’s how netizens reacted to their experiences:
Btw, body-shaming does not just equates to discriminating someone for their plus sizes. Even those who are skinny get shamed at times. Oh you are too fat! Oh you are too skinny! Itna mat khaaya karo! Thoda toh khaaya karo! Chuck them. No one has the right to stop you from entering anywhere be it stepping inside a nightclub or wherever you wanna be.
Well done, you guys, for speaking up against such behavior. What does enjoying a night with friends in a club have anything to do with body size? Explain, please?