I ‘discovered’ Eugenia Cooney few weeks ago. She is an American Youtuber and streamer based in Massachusetts. Her contents are mostly about makeup tutorials, fashion hauls, and vlogs. What makes her stand out is, unfortunately, her very apparent underweight, with the public suspicion of eating disorder (anorexia).
When you’re someone putting your life out in public and it gained massive tractions, it’s quite inevitable that people will start talking about you. And those ‘discussions’ sometimes resort into the more negative side, e.g. passing judgements, making assumptions, talking trash on comments and DMs, etc. I’m not endorsing that, of course, but I fully acknowledge that it happens.
At 170 cm tall, Eugenia is estimated to weight at 40 kg. I mean, that was my weight when I was in junior high. And Eugenia is 27, only a year my senior. A bunch of lessons I learnt from following the discourse about Eugenia:
- People with anorexia eating disorder thrives from attention. Those comments similar of “omg I can’t believe you are this skinny,” no matter whether it came from an empathetic or disapproving place, would only be the fuel for their disorder. Attention means that people noticing their effort to be ‘a bone queen’ and how they’re on the ‘right track’ for that title. It’s life-threatening.
- When you are as underweight as Eugenia for a prolonged period of time, some parts of your skin will appear blue-ish, like bruises. On Eugenia, everyone noticed it on her legs. It’s because her body lacks of nutrients, and the blood vessels become damaged.
- Eugenia is said to mostly standing on her videos and livestreams because sitting may hurt her. She doesn’t have enough bouncy ass fat and muscle to keep her sitting comfortably.
- If you watch Eugenia’s videos, you may not notice it at first, but she never looked at the camera. She’s always looking slightly sideways to see her own reflection (on mirror? monitor?). This is called ‘body checking.’ She wants to make sure she always looks perfect (by her standard) rather than actually talk to her audience. People said her body checking behavior is already in very severe stage.
- There are people whose fetish is seeing extremely thin person lifting stuffs that looked heavy. Love Eugenia Cooney channel made a compilation video titled “eugenia forgot to move her makeup again (3-18-21)” where it shows a pattern of her Twitch stream viewers cheered for her right after that make up box skit. A mild application of Rule 34 here.
- Eugenia’s mother is said to be the enabler for her. She’s cheerfully participated on a bunch of Eugenia’s videos, clearly knowing that her daughter is in serious, life-threatening condition.
- I learnt this from Dorian (Of Herbs and Altars) that human bodies are still capable of getting through anorexia when we’re under 20 years old (something about young bodies and metabolisms). But after that, it became very strenuous for the internal organs even to just keep us alive. Many of their friends don’t make it to their late 20s when they don’t get help for their eating disorders.
- The viewers noticed that when Eugenia is gaining weight after her early 2019 hiatus, she started making videos with clothes that have more coverage. But when she gets skinnier again, it’s back to her showing pointy collar bones and bony limbs. The more people point that out, the more skin Eugenia shows. We’re back to point 1, essentially.
Most of the recent videos people made talking about Eugenia are sadly discussing on how she’s basically a lost cause at this point. It’s like we’re only waiting for the news of she’s finally not here anymore with us. Someone recommends a documentary titled “Emma Wants to Live” by Java Films. It’s a very moving, sad, yet powerful story. Especially how it’s Emma (RIP) herself that wants to document how, despite her struggles, in her heart, she still always chooses life, and we should always, too.
Virtually, in my opinion, Eugenia is not yet on the level of where Emma was. And I would never want her to be anyway. Unfortunately, most of us on the internet don’t have any power to steer Eugenia away from the same finish line. And like how we always are, us silent watchers are just going to spectate her in deep guilt, both fascinated and embarrassed that somehow we indirectly let this thing happen right before our eyes.