Karamo meets Thick and Fabulous, a Dallas dance collective of plus-size performers who face constant body-shaming online. The group shares how dance gives them joy and community, while Karamo confronts the haters about why they feel driven to criticize and hurt people.
Chapters
[Speaker] I am so excited about my guests. I discovered videos of these ladies on TikTok doing what they love to do best, which is dance, while at the same time also trying to fend off body shamers and haters in their comments. They call themselves Thick and Fabulous, and they are here for some advice on how to handle the haters. Don't worry, I got y'all on that. Everyone, please welcome Ebony, Rachel, Skylar, Courtney, and Faith. To the show. Thank you for being here, ladies. You look beautiful. So you are living your best lives right now. So I want you to tell me, um, we'll start with you, Ebony. How does dancing make you feel?
Um, dancing has always been a passion of mine. When I'm on the floor, when I'm in front of a crowd, it's like the best feeling for me, nothing exists, nothing exists. It's just pure joy.
Is that the same for you, Kay?
Yes, it's liberating. It makes me free 'cause I work a stressful job.
What you do?
So I'm an early intervention specialist and I'm an advocate. I work with individuals who are HIV positive as well as those that are not. Trying to keep them from getting there, yes. So I advocate, so when I have a stressful day, I go and I be like, ah.
That's what I do. Let's break it down. I love that. You know what? You giving back, you got to take care of yourself as well. But I wonder, what does everyone else do as well? Let's start with you.
OK. I am a speech therapist for the elementary level. So I help children find their voice. So what I do.
Good job. Khaled, what about you?
I actually work in IT. I'm one of the managers of the help desk. So if you break it, I fix it.
Yes.
All right, Joy.
I am a paraprofessional for inclusion students. I work with high school kids with special needs.
Good job.
So I'm actually the creative director and choreographer for our Thick and Fabulous beautiful ladies here. I also have my own photography company and then I teach dance locally around Dallas.
That's amazing. So are you the reason of how Thick and Fabulous formed?
So we've known each other around Dallas and I've seen these ladies in dance classes and I said, oh no, everybody needs to see these ladies. And we wanted something that represented the thick and the fabulous. Like we dance and we want y'all to enjoy us dancing as well. So absolutely.
And this has become more than just a dance group. Scarlet, tell me about that.
Honestly, well, life in itself is hard enough. Life be lifin', as we love to say around here. So having these girls and coming to practice with them kind of releases that. It allows us to express our passions, get out our frustrations, get back to our happy and our peaceful place. We support each other in all our endeavors, whether it be wedding, our marriage, she just got recently married.
Yeah!
Okay.
From any function, family function, their family is our family.
All of our families are always there for everything we need them for.
Well, you know, I love that, yeah. I love that you have your supporters. But as I said in the intro, there's also a lot of haters.
Oh yeah.
Oh, for sure. Tell me, Courtney, tell me about the haters and what's going through.
Whenever we post our videos, you know, we are existing in our own bodies and loving ourselves. Everyone else wants to project their inner hate on us. And so we get that a lot. We get the, "Y'all need to lose weight. Y'all look unhealthy. Y'all this, y'all that." We get that all of the time. And so sometimes it can kind of be a hit on our confidence a little bit. But you know what? Sometimes we just kind of scoot it to the side. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a struggle.
Has it been affecting y'all's self-esteem and your mental health?
I've actually had to step back away from the team at times to kind of get myself back together. I've gone to therapy for other things, but this is something that did get touched on.
Yeah.
And so It's interesting 'cause sometimes the criticism that we get comes closest to us at times and that's kind of the most hurtful. But overall these girls kind of tell you, you're this, you're amazing, you're fabulous. You know what I mean? Love you. And so that's really helped. But yeah, it takes a toll.
I appreciate you being vulnerable. And sometimes it's very easy for us from the outside to judge somebody. And it's very easy for us to make a comment on social media. It's very easy to just make a comment, to say something about someone's clothes disregarding the effort they put in and also disregarding that there's a human being behind it. And I think we've gotten to a place in our culture that we talk about all the time like, yeah, I'm fabulous, I'm great, yeah, I love it. But then we forget like at the end of the day, I go home and your things, it hurts me. It hurts. And you're doing what you love and you don't deserve for someone to come online to hurt you. And I'm sorry about that. And so that's why I appreciate your vulnerability and I wanna say sorry because I think people sometimes just feel like, well, my one-second comment is not gonna hurt somebody, but it's your one-second comment that lives with me forever.
Right.
And that's what people forget.
You never know what someone else is struggling with.
Yeah.
And it may not seem like a deep and hurtful comment to you, but that may be something that's triggering for that person. We look at ourselves every day. We know what size we are. We don't need a constant reminder of our size. We do what we love to do, and if you appreciate it, we thank you so much. But those that want to project their negativity on us, sometimes that can be a little shot. Like, we're putting our time, we're putting our effort, we rehearse hours into something that we creatively want to give out to the world, and to have people like take jabs, it can— even when you're like, yeah, I'm fine, it can sometimes kind of be a little stinger to you.
So Faith, I know it's important that you all are— you want to reach a goal. Tell me what the goal is, your termination.
So our goal is one of them, 'cause we have many, but we want to dance for the Super Bowl.
Oh, hit the Rihanna moves.
Hit the Rihanna moves. Okay, Rihanna, you watching, girl?
Please, are you looking? We peeping, girl.
Well, I'll tell you this, I know that y'all came here and asked me for advice for how to deal with the haters. I have no advice for you I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't. Because the advice, and I think the conversation needs to be shifted, it's not towards y'all. Y'all living y'all lives. Y'all are loving yourselves. Y'all are trying to do it the best. It's everyone at home that is watching this. It's for every single person who's on social media looking at people who are living their best lives, who are loving themselves, who are doing the work to make sure they are happy, and you come and rain on their parade. This advice for you. Stop and think why. Why do you feel like it's important for you to stop and hurt somebody else? Why is it important for you to make that comment? What are you gaining? What do you think you gonna be better in life by saying something? So my advice for everyone out there, when you see these beautiful women living their best lives, it's your job to check yourself because it ain't about them, it's about you. So y'all keep living and loving yourselves, all right? And just know it's us out here that's supporting you. You focus on us, all right? And I can't wait to see y'all at the Super Bowl, all right?
All right.
I love y'all. All right everyone, thank you for being with us. Make sure to come back, friends, so we can keep talking and growing. I love you all. Hold up, hold up. Where are you going? I know you wanna watch more Karamo, so click here to subscribe and click here to watch more. So we can keep talking and growing, friends. I love you.
