Pt 1: Fat Fetish, Feederism, and inappropriate content
This topic is quite lengthy and probably the most damaging to others, so we’ll start with it.
Michelle has a (self-admitted) fat fetish that she tried to cover up and hide from her audience. Once you notice its existence, it’s hard to ignore because it permeated so much of Michelle’s art in the last few months before she deactivated.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with having a fat fetish. I want to get that out of the way first. But I think it should be obvious to say that if you’re a minor you shouldn’t be posting about your sexual fixations online, nor should you be exposing these attractions to your audience, ESPECIALLY if you know a majority of these people are also minors. The problem isn’t that Michelle likes fat people. It’s that she *knows* exposing these things online is wrong, yet she covered her tracks and acted as if her art wasn’t fetish material. If she had waited until she was 18 and made an 18+ account, this would be a non-issue. But instead, she opted for making her account **13+** when she knew she would be posting content like the things you’ll see shortly.
I also take issue with her putting these things in the main tag without some sort of cw for fetish content, but given that until the end she was obsessed with popularity and was pretending like none of this *was* fetish content, I guess this shouldn’t be surprising
How do we know it was a fat fetish?
Before a person admits that they have a fat fetish… how can you tell? I think this is an important question to ask, especially for people like minors who shouldn’t be exposed to such things, and for your average person who just doesn’t want to see fetish material and weed it out quick via blocking that user.
Usually the person outright admits to it so it’s easy, but if they *don’t* admit to it or even pretend like it’s offensive to assume it *is* a fetish thing (like in the case of Michelle, who would reblog posts that would say things like “ugh I hate when people assume that drawing fat people means you have a fetish :/“), there are almost always clues if you look for them.
Firstly, people who draw inclusive body types and make a point to draw their favorite characters fat do not *necessarily* have a fat fetish. That much should be obvious. But when a person fixates on one specific part of the body constantly (in Michelle’s case, the belly), that’s usually a sign of something fishy going on.
In her art, Michelle would incessantly make references to chubby stomachs in one form or another: wanting to kiss them, hug them, touch them… you get the point. In so much of her art, the belly is distended in a way that would exaggerate the shape of the stomach, and the stomach would often be exposed in some way. Sometimes she would even draw the character grabbing their stomach. Another theme in Michelle’s art was that she would often draw her favorite character, Mortimer, who most of this fixation went towards, engaging with food in an odd way. There were a lot of references to overeating, binging, breaking his corsets after indulging too much… things of that nature. I think this is where it crosses over into feederism territory.
Take a look for yourself at some examples: (CW: feederism and fat fetish material, obviously (click for better quality)
Now, especially for those among us who have been on the internet for a while.... are you really comfortable saying this is innocent fun and just an attempt at inclusivity? There's a difference between drawing fat people and wanting to include them in your art and... whatever this is.
Here's Michelle's post where she clarified that her blog is now 13+, as well as two posts of her making comments trying to imply she doesn't have a fat fetish:
(there were a handful of other posts like the two above, but we only managed to save these two)
on the surface it might look ok if you're not aware of her fetish content, but once you *are* aware, it becomes highly suspect that presumably she's comfortable with people as young as 13 to be exposed to content she *knows* is fetish material.
Fessing up and deactivation
In the end, she ended up admitting to the allegations privately. I wish so desperately that I had photo evidence of this, but they're lost to time. One of Michelle's close friends in the fandom, who I will not name at this moment, was made aware of the allegations and confronted her. When Michelle was asked about these things, she freaked out, admitted to this friend that she's had this fixation for a while (after apparently having been exposed to fetish content herself at a young age), claimed that she thought this sort of thing was "normal" on Tumblr/online, then deactivated her account minutes after. If you were wondering why Michelle's account went up in smoke so quickly without so much as a goodbye... this is why. Whether you believe it was a truly impulsive move or a way to burn the evidence is up to you.
Again, I really do wish I had photographic evidence of this. Unfortunately, when Michelle deactivated, the dms between her and the friend in question became unaccessible--an error in tumblr's coding, presumably. I trust this person's testimony fully since I know them and know they wouldn't lie about this, but If you want to take this portion with a grain of salt I do completely understand. As nice as it was to get confirmation straight from the horse's mouth, ultimately I do not think it's entirely necessary because I believe her art speaks for itself.
She claimed at the end that she "thought it was normal" to do these things online, but if that were the case I do not think Michelle would have gone through such lengths to conceal what she was doing. She wouldn't have tried to cover her tracks and imply that you would be wrong if you thought her art was anything other than innocent and inclusive. Anyone who knows Michelle knows she is not a shy person. I believe that if she truly thought what she was doing was normal and fine, she would have been confident and open about it. But instead, she hid behind a 13+ rating and exposed her fanbase to this content over and over and over again for months. The fact that she immediately confessed and nuked her account after being called out privately proves it to me. These are the actions of someone who feels guilt and knows what they're doing is inappropriate.
It is entirely apparent to me that Michelle knew what she was doing, and what she was doing was creating self-indulgent fetish content.
More examples of inappropriate content (Miscellaneous)
A while back, Michelle reblogged one of her friend's posts and, despite the fact that it had nothing to do with the post itself, reblogged it with cropped Mortimer Mouse porn that she presumably made herself. It was meant as a joke at the time, but she only deleted it after other users called her out in the comments, citing how inappropriate and uncomfortable it was for her as a minor (she was 16 at the time) to be posting this content, and on an adult's post no less.
Michelle deleted the post and apologized to her friend and it was swept under the rug, but despite the apologies, her fanbase still saw the reblog and it's been confirmed that a user as young as 10 or 11 at the time saw it, based on comments left under the post.
CW: cropped explicit images
Michelle also has an issue with sharing deviantart-variety fetish posts, either impulsively or as a joke. This one wouldn't be so bad until you remember that Michelle's active fanbase is mostly minors. She might be sharing these images as a silly joke in her eyes, but in the end she's still very much spreading these images around and exposing them to her audience.
Also, given that she *has* a fat fetish, it makes me question why she would post these in the first place? Specifically with the inflation and vore posts, she seems to be making fun of them... but given she herself has a similar fetish... it feels odd to me. Like girl that's your cousin, why are you making fun of them? In one of the examples below, she speaks to a friend about a drowning fetish, and instead of privately showing the friend in dms proof of what she found, she posts the images for everyone to see.
Not every single example of this habit of hers was able to be recovered before Michelle deactivated her account. Most of these examples were taken from her inactive YouTube account, or, in the case of the drowning fetish screenshots, we managed to grab in the weeks before she deactivated. But this sort of thing (overlaying fetish art over her works) wasn't uncommon for her.
I want to state that I'm sure her intention with these examples was just to have some fun. I'm not trying to imply she's a groomer or that she had the intention to groom other minors. But this sort of behavior is inappropriate for someone her age, and whatever her intentions happened to be... the end result is the same: she exposed her fanbase to fetish pics at random.
If more information is brought to the table, I will update this page as needed.
Pt 2 will cover topics such as art theft, copying, and mirroring (will be linked when the post is done)