A plus-size woman has hit back at internet trolls who said her fit husband should be with someone thinner than her.
Alicia Mccarvell, a body positive influencer from Canada, recently posted a video to TikTok which showed her cozying up to her husband, Scott Mccarvell, with whom she’s been married to for 15 years.
However, she soon started to receive a slew of negative comments from social media users on the video – which was viewed more than 24 million times – who said their relationship didn’t ‘add up.
Some people accused him of only being with her for her money, wondered if he was secretly gay, and said she must not have been ‘fat’ when he first fell in love with her.
She has now responded to the backlash in a new video – slamming ‘society’s trash beauty standards’ and the people who believe that someone physically fit ‘could never be in love with or compatible with a fat woman.’
‘I posted a simple transition video of me and my husband going from towels to dressed up together. This is not unlike what all kinds of different couples do on this app,’ she began in her response video, which received more than 15 million views.
The video showed her and Scott in their towels before transforming to them all dressed up for a night out
‘My video went viral, and I know we all know why. It’s because by beauty standards, we don’t make sense.’
Alicia said that when people look at them, they often ‘immediately value Scott as more than her.’
She continued: ‘Since we don’t add up, people try to add things to my side of the equation to make it make sense, saying things like, “Oh, she must not have been fat when they met,” or, “Oh, she’s got to be rich.”
‘Or they try to decrease his side of the equation by saying things like, “He must be gay,” or, “He fetishes fat women.”
‘We’ve been made to believe that somebody who is physically fit like Scott could never in a million years be in love with or compatible with a fat woman.
‘And that’s solely because the world has literally taught us that we have to value our worth [based] on our bodies.’
Alicia admitted that she has told herself for the ‘majority of their relationship’ that she wasn’t ‘worthy of his love’ because of her body.
She also said ‘thin’ women often slide into his DMs and hit on her husband, with one recently telling him, ‘You should be with somebody who looks like me.’
‘I’m undervaluing myself and she is overvaluing herself. We have both been made to believe that our value lies in our body,’ she added.
Alicia explained when it comes to what her husband values, ‘how well her body fits into society’s beauty standards is not on the top of his list.’
‘He values my humor and my commitment and my love and my caring heart,’ she explained.
‘None of these things that he values about me change if my body changes. So when someone slides into his DMs leading with their body first, he’s asking, “But what else?”
‘Because he, like I, know that people’s values don’t lie in how well their bodies fit into society’s trash beauty standards.
‘And I get it, if this is the way you think, it’s the way you’ve been taught. However, it is your responsibility to unlearn it.’