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Seeing You: Texas traffic anchor speaks out on body shaming

Our Meredith TerHaar recently spoke with WFAA's Traffic Anchor Demetria Obilor about her experience being body shamed by viewers.

Our "Seeing You" body image campaign continues with a discussion about how women in the media are viewed.

Meredith TerHaar recently spoke with WFAA's Traffic Anchor Demetria Obilor about her experience being body shamed by viewers. It happened last fall when a viewer criticized her size and her clothing on Facebook.

She took on the viewer head on with a video she posted on social media.

During her interview with Meredith, Demetria emphasized that while, as a member of the media, she has been criticized before, this time she was inspired to speak out because of all the people who were supporting her online wth love and encouragement.

She realized, "This was a moment to take a stand and to say hey, this is not OK. And also to educate people, that was very important to me," explained Demetria.

Meredith asked her what kind of advice she would give young women today. She explained that it's important to develop self confidence at a young age so that, "you can look at comments like that and know that nothing can touch you. That's how I feel, you can't touch me, you can't shake me and I'm not moved by this," said Demetria.

"I can be a punching bag, that's fine. But this sort of behavior, this sort of talk is unacceptable, and we should be shaping a better world for the future, for our kids, for those young girls, who want to be on TV or who want to do anything. Or young boys, as well. It's one thing to give someone helpful criticism, it's another thing to make jokes about somebody and try to bring them down."

Our "Seeing You" body image campaign continues tonight when our Juliet Dragos sits down with former a Miss America. You'll hear about her issues with body images and some changes that may be coming to the pageant.

The series culminates at a live event on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Pinnacle Center in Hudsonville where an expert panel will continue the conversation with attendees.

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