![Shane Dawson The Return of Eugenia Cooney YouTube eating disorders]()
- Shane Dawson, one of YouTube's most popular creators, has rebranded himself over the past year as a documentary filmmaker who explores well-known influencers, with his most recent hour-long video getting over 27 million views.
- "The Return of Eugenia Cooney"follows Dawson as he explores the past and present of Cooney, a YouTuber who appears to struggle with a severe eating disorder, and recently returned to the platform after a rehabilitation visit.
- INSIDER spoke with two experts — neither of whom have personally treated Cooney — who believe that Dawson's video could be harmful to both Cooney and its audience.
- Dawson did not return request for comment.
- Visit INSIDER's homepage for more stories.
Shane Dawson is one of the most powerful creators on YouTube, with more than 22 million subcribers. He arguably ranks even higher in his ability to influence the influencer community, an immeasurable quality with sweeping effects on internet culture.
For Tana Mongeau, the reigning wild child of YouTube who keeps inserting herself into mainstream entertainment (most recently, with her MTV reality series and pseudo-marriage to Jake Paul), he played emergency PR agent and helped to rehabilitate her image after the disastrous TanaCon.
For Mongeau's apparent husband, Paul, Dawson made a man who some have called a sociopath seem more human. For Jeffree Star, who is now the second most-subscribed-to beauty guru, he helped reignite a career in content.
And for Eugenia Cooney, his latest YouTuber subject who was widely speculated to have a severe eating disorder before a stint in rehab, he paved the way for a comeback and a fresh audience of more than 600,000 new subscribers. "The Return of Eugenia Cooney," has been viewed over 27 million times.
Dawson's long-form videos about fellow YouTubers purport to peel back the layers of their curated online facade to examine the hidden realities or secrets behind their everyday, public personas. For nearly all of Dawson's controversial subjects, the effect has largely been humanizing.
Read more: Here are all the YouTube controversies that have happened so far in 2019
Until now, the stakes have mostly been the public perceptions of the YouTubers in question. Whether Shane's portrayal of them is truthful has little effect on anything but the profitability of those in front of and behind the camera. But with Dawson's examination of Cooney and her eating disorder, the stakes are much higher.
In February, Cooney tweeted that she was taking a social media break to voluntarily work with her doctor on a medical issue that fans largely assumed was an eating disorder. Her appearance in Dawson's video was supposed to signal her "comeback."
"Any time we focus on a story of a young woman who happens to be in a very, very thin body, it has an impact on mostly young followers, but even older people," Janell Mensinger, a Research Psychologist and Biostatistician in the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, told INSIDER.
"If you're struggling with an eating disorder, it can be triggering. Given the audience, [Dawson's] followers are mostly younger, so I think it's even more problematic because they're the people who are going to consume this documentary. There probably needs to be greater attention given to the dangers of the eating disorder."
But Mensinger points out that the video's audience, which skews female, according to the demographics listed on Dawson's booking website, and young, based on overall YouTube demographics, isn't the only stakeholder at risk: Experts and fans in the video's comment section alike are still concerned about Cooney.
Experts call Dawson's video 'dangerous' for its portrayal of eating disorders
When watching "The Return of Eugenia Cooney," the first thing viewers see is a black screen with a warning: "The following contains discussions of eating disorders which may be triggering to viewers."
The actual discussion with Cooney about her eating disorder doesn't really start until after the 33-minute mark, when she and Dawson sit down at a picnic table outside the apartment she shares with her family. Cooney confirms for the first time that she had an eating disorder in a conversation that spans less than 20 minutes, interspersed with dozens of clips from her channel and elsewhere.
Read more: YouTuber Tana Mongeau defends marriage to Jake Paul as legit after she said their wedding was 'for fun and for content'
The entirety of the hour-long video is cut with rapid-fire clips, mostly from Cooney's channel, which highlight her gaunt frame and shrinking form. For six years, Cooney posted to YouTube and streamed herself on platforms like Twitch, and the now 25-year-old grew progressively thinner, sparking worry and cruelty from fans and detractors.
At first glance, Cooney's comeback seems like a natural fit for Dawson: Dawson has been candid about his own body dysmorphia— disordered thinking about perceived flaws in one's physical appearance — and disordered eating in the past. As Dawson explains at the outset of the video, the goal is to explore Cooney's struggle and recovery.
Cooney filmed with Dawson and returned to YouTube after a month of in-patient care at a rehabilitation facility, and reactions to the debut were mixed. Many of Dawson's fans applauded him for bringing attention to a stigmatized issue he can relate to.
"Who could dislike this? Shane, this is one of the best things on the internet. My gosh. What an inspiring story of overcoming not only her own inner struggle, but the horrible projections, opinions, and insecurities of those shielded by screens,"one commenter wrote.
Other fans were concerned with Cooney's safety, given that she referred to having an eating disorder in the past tense, signaling that she may not be considering further treatment.
"She certainly looks like she is physically healthier, but mentally she still seems like she's struggling a lot and she tries to cover it with her overwhelming positivity,"another comment on the video says.
Experts who spoke with INSIDER — and who have not personally treated Cooney — are wary of considering Cooney's treatment a success story.
"When we are in the midst of our eating disorder we are very, very good at wearing masks. We're very good at playing a role that is very convincing and wants to let people know that we're okay," Chevese Turner, the Chief Strategy & Policy Officer for the National Eating Disorders Association, told INSIDER.
"A month of treatment is just barely scratching the surface of the road to recovery. While she put on a good face and was very chipper and cheerful, I'm not convinced that's what's going on inside. How do any of us know for sure?"
While both experts told INSIDER they believe Dawson had good intentions, they also expressed numerous concerns with the way the video presented the reality of eating disorders, and Cooney's recovery in particular. Turner says having Cooney share her story could be very cathartic, but she worries how much of her appearance was intended to resurrect or preserve her career.
"What's essentially happening is that people are bullying her online for her looks and her body and that does have an impact, it impacts all of us when that happens. For someone with an eating disorder, the impact can be devastating. I think [Dawson is] trying to help in his own way, but probably the thing that would help the most is her having more time in recovery," Turner said.
"I don't want to speculate, but obviously her success on YouTube is a driving factor to get back to work. None of us know if she's fully capable for that work and I would want to believe that the people around her who care about her most are confident that she can handle it," she continued. "I hope that they'll encourage her to take a break."
![Eugenia Cooney and Shane Dawson in a video on her channel]()
Read more: 26 photos show the wild antics inside Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau's $500,000 Vegas wedding, including a 'Game of Thrones' sword and a massive mid-ceremony brawl
Mensinger suggested that the best resolution to Dawson's video would be that Cooney would continue to share updates of her treatment with her fans, to dispel the notion that recovery is as easy as completing one in-patient treatment.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg. She's not out of the woods on her physical recovery, she's not out of the woods by a long shot on her psychological work. You can't really start the psychological work until she's at the point where she's at now," Mensinger said.
In the video, Dawson speaks to Kati Morton, a YouTuber and licensed clinical therapist, before interviewing Cooney. Morton suggests that Dawson avoid asking Cooney about her appearance or what she ate before and during her treatment – but after Cooney tells Dawson nothing is off-limits in his questioning, he asks her about both.
"I think that kind of voyeuristic reporting is what sensationalizes the illness," Mensinger said. "She did say 'I've always had a really low self-esteem,' and it felt like 'Wow, that's key, let's focus on that.' But it kind of came and went. That kind of stuff could have been much more valuable had there been more attention placed on that."
Both experts were also concerned that Dawson's video played into an overarching stereotype about eating disorders, which is that they tend to affect privileged white women, and tend to result in excessive weight loss like Cooney's. In reality, both said eating disorders cut across demographics, and aren't always visible.
"There are so many people with just as serious eating disorders who started out with a much higher body weight, who are losing weight, and who are just as dangerously ill who nobody knows about," Mensinger said. "I think that narrative is being missed when so much attention is being drawn to cases like Eugenia's."
Neither Cooney nor Dawson responded to INSIDER's requests for comment.
Dawson's sphere of influence on YouTube has real-life ramifications
The sway Dawson's exposés have over the YouTube community cannot be underestimated. His series exploring whether YouTuber Jake Paul is a sociopath, which takes on pseudo-scientific premises and fails to dispute them or pass judgment on a genuinely controversial influencer, has taken on a life on its own.
When Cole Carrigan, a former member of Paul's "Team 10" (a group of YouTubers who live in a Calabasas mansion with Paul and create content together), made a video accusing Paul's associates of bullying him and calling him homophobic slurs, Paul defended himself with Dawson's documentary.
"I've proven time and time and Shane Dawson documentary and time again that I am a good person,"Paul said in a video response, effectively using Dawson's series about him to acquit him from wrongdoing.
![Shane Dawson Jake Paul]()
Dawson's YouTube presence is a major peek into the cultural trends that shape American youth. A July 2019 poll found that 29 percent of kids in the US between 8 and 14-years-old want to be YouTubers, coming in first ahead of teachers, professional athletes, musicians, and astronauts. YouTube has become one of the most popular online destinations for children and teenagers, outpacing TV starting in 2016.
YouTube, with its teen idols, influencer culture, and endless controversies has progressively become the lens through which America's youth views the world. On this year's AP exams, teenagers wrote about the explosive drama in May between beauty YouTubers James Charles, Jeffree Star (one of Dawson's closest friends), and Tati Westbrook for their argumentative essays.
Read more: Transgender YouTubers say they were kicked out of Jake Paul's Team 10 house because his video editor told them they weren't 'real girls'
When Dawson decided to make Cooney the subject of his latest documentary, he put her on a global pedestal for which the YouTube community could gawk at and dissect, as it is prone to do with its drama channels and penchant for conspiracy.
Conspiracies quickly formed, with additional input from Cooney's alleged former friends who say they unsuccessfully tried to help her escape from an abusive and manipulative family situation
In a video with over 1.5 million views that has since been dissected by YouTube news shows like The Philip DeFranco Show, YouTuber Jaclyn Glenn claims Dawson may have unintentionally hurt Cooney even more, since he was likely unaware of the "real truth" behind her treatment — that Cooney was involuntarily committed to a rehab facility.
Mensinger told INSIDER she, too, was concerned that there was family drama, and perhaps even manipulation behind the scenes, but noted that it's impossible for viewers to know the details, and warned against drawing uninformed conclusions about Cooney and her family.
"People are saying she shouldn't have gone home back into that toxic environment. She needs to work on that. She needs to work through that to figure out that's a toxic environment," Mensinger said. "She's young. She's not ready to let go of the comforts her mom provides her, even if she is manipulative. It's enormously complicated."
And YouTube is a fickle friend; Cooney and her recovery have hit YouTube's backburner, as the platform's endless stream of content exposes new dramas and controversies. Concerns about Cooney, however, remain in place, as she continues to upload new content, treating her channel as business as usual.
"As a person in the field, I don't like seeing these types of things because I worry. I worry for the person, I worry for other people, and so on and so forth," Turner said. "I'd rather it not be out there without an actual professional conducting the interview or a professional talking about it with somebody who is well-recovered. That would be my preference.
"But I also know in this age of YouTube, and the internet and so forth, we are probably not going to stop these things. So we have to do as much education as we can."
Join the conversation about this story »
