After Going Viral, Malaysian-British Couple Reveal Disgusting Cyberbullying & Fat-Shaming They Face
Hayden and Nina initially went viral in June for, well, their physical differences.
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When a Malaysian-British interracial couple went viral in Malaysia in June for their unique love story, little did they expect to find themselves the subject of intense fat-shaming and cyberbulling.
Meet Hayden & Nina, aka HaydenToNina, the Malaysian-British couple who started a YouTube channel to share their experiences as a couple, especially one that comes from two different countries and cultural backgrounds.
However, as more and more people began to notice the couple, Malaysian Nina, and her Chinese-British husband Hayden found themselves the subject of multiple articles and comments with backhanded compliments that paint their love story as one of “heart over looks.”
(Credit: Twitter)
If you google our name HaydenToNina, we have been painted as the “Heart over Looks couple” – which we never wanted to represent ourselves as. We wanted to represent as ourselves. Not the “lucky fat girl married to a good looking guy.”
HaydenToNina via Twitter.
Nina tells TRP that this experience of being highlighted in the media as “lucky” to be married to a “good looking person” has ruined her self-worth so much that she is going back to therapy.
When it first happened to me, I kept having panic attacks and was struggling to hold myself together. I knew that internet trolls exist, but I wasn’t ready for that amount of hate to be thrown at me when our content is clearly just for fun and just happy things.
Nina to TRP.
Even as the hype died down, Nina still finds comments urging her to lose weight for her husband’s sake on their YouTube videos.
Some are coated in a syrupy layer of “concern for her health”, while hinting that it’s her husband’s “secret wish.”
Nina tells us that these horrible comments have also left Hayden genuinely upset over the misrepresentation of their relationship.
The story we’d like to share is about how bi-racial couple works – our hardships, how it works in our family, what is a healthy relationship. We never really thought our appearance was that big of a deal because in a relationship, the heart is what matters.
Hayden and Nina to TRP.
Fat shaming is cyberbullying
The American National Eating Disorders Association states that body- or fat -shaming is one of the most common forms of cyberbullying.
READ MORE: Malaysia Ranks Second In Asia For Cyberbullying
The thing is, no matter how nicely one tries to put it, fat shaming DOES NOT work.
Presenters at the Canadian Obesity Summit point out that fat shaming is harmful to health and can drive weight gain instead.
Studies show that this exposure triggers physiological and behavioural changes linked to poor metabolic health and increased weight gain.
You actually experience a form of stress. Cortisol spikes, self-control drops and the risk of binge eating increases.
Angela Alberga, an assistant professor in the department of health, kinesiology and applied physiology at Concordia University via NCBI.
A study by the University of Pennsylvania also highlights that fat shaming is linked to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, eating disorders and exercise avoidance.
There is a common misconception that stigma might help motivate individuals with obesity to lose weight and improve their health. We are finding it has quite the opposite effect.
Rebecca Pearl, Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania.
The negative effects don’t just include personal fat shaming, but fat shaming of public personalities as well.
Here are some of the few cyberbullying comments that have been made about me and my husband since we got married.
— HaydenToNina (@haydentonina) August 25, 2020
Fatphobia is real, wake up people. pic.twitter.com/NWSVNvjPrZ
Psychologists from McGill University found that instances of celebrity fat-shaming were associated with an increase in women’s implicit negative weight-related attitudes.
The researchers explain that these cultural and media messages can leave a “private trace in people’s minds” and augment women’s gut-level feeling that ‘thin’ is good and ‘fat’ is bad.
This is exactly what Nina is trying to push against.
Despite the vitriol and emotional stress inflicted by the harmful comments, Nina explains that she decided to speak up to show how pervasive this culture is in Malaysia.
I want to raise awareness about cyber bullying and how our society is still living in the idea of a beauty standard. I want to empower people who struggle with body image as I do. I guess sharing the screenshots is a step of my own healing and taking power of myself as well.
Nina to TRP.
While Malaysia still has a long way to go in addressing harmful beauty standards and online bullying, there’s an old saying that’s easy enough for anyone to follow: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”
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