Demetria Obilor (c. 1991- ), a traffic reporter in the US, appears in the morning on ABC Channel 8 in Dallas, Texas. She made the news herself when she was body-shamed on the Internet for her “ridiculous” looks.
Jan Shedd (pictured above) on Facebook:
“Has anyone seen Channel 8’s new morning traffic reporter? Her name is Demetria Obilor & she’s a size 16/18 woman in a size 6 dress and she looks ridiculous. I understand that when I watch Channel 8 I’m going to get biased reporting and political correctness, but clearly they have taken complete leave of their senses. I’m not going to watch Channel 8 anymore.”
Mother of Draggings (@fabfreshandfly) tweeted Jan Shedd’s remarks with this picture of Obilor:
and added:
“Jan is big mad. Don’t be like Jan.”
Chance the Rapper weighed in:
“BIIIIIIG MAD”
He has 6.3 million followers. It spread like wildfire on Twitter. It seems that most people supported Obilor.
Curly & curvy: She is not thin and blonde, like zillions of women on US television, but has dark brown curly hair and a curvy figure. In my opinion she is much better looking than most women on television.
Shedd, a Tea Partier and Trump supporter, later removed her comment and put up a new one that assured us it had nothing to do with race (Shedd is White, Obilor is Black):
“I recently put up a post about the way a lady on Channel 8 dressed, who happened to be black. Frankly, I didn’t even notice that she was black. I was shocked that Channel 8 w0uld put someone on the air that dressed so provocatively. The racist mafia did not appreciate the criticism and now they are harassing me. I just blocked about 50 of them.”
This is not the first time for Obilor. Last summer someone sent an email about “Demetrie’s hair” that said:
“I can’t believe hair like that can be properly cleaned and therefore must smell bad. I have to fast forward whenever she comes on.”
Obilor’s father is Nigerian, her mother White. She studied Broadcast Journalism at the University of Kansas and became a traffic reporter in her native Kansas City. Later she was a traffic reporter in Las Vegas (KLAS-TV, CBS, Channel 8) and now Dallas (WFAA-TV, ABC, Channel 8).
Obilor:
“Black people on TV; there’s nothing wrong with that. Naturally, curly hair – I don’t care if a black woman wants to wear her hair straight or in braids, you don’t get to say what’s professional and what’s not professional based on your white standard of beauty.”
“This is the way that I’m built, this is the way I was born, I’m not going anywhere, so if you don’t like it, you have your options.”
“It’s important for young girls growing up to see different figures and shapes and colors in the news, on TV, in magazines, and in movies.”
“When you see yourself represented, you think, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.'”
“We have to embrace ourselves.”
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- Are White women good looking?
- thick Black women
- race and beauty
- representation matters
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We will see if Jan Shed gets fired. If it had been the other way around and the shaming was done towards a white person then they would have gotten fired.
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Being plain, Jan Shedd was just lashing out at someone a hell of a lot prettier.
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Amazing how anything that deviates from the culturally accepted norm makes white Americans freak out and go on the warpath.
Wait….did I say “amazing”? I mean’t “depressing and totally expected.”
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“I recently put up a post about the way a lady on Channel 8 dressed, who happened to be black. Frankly, I didn’t even notice that she was black.”
Hilarious! Of course, a White supremacist bigot “didn’t even notice” someone’s ethnicity. Or does Jan Shedd just happen to be thick as a brick?
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Who ever has that curvy woman as a gf, fiance or wife is damn lucky…
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Racially ambiguous rubenesque women are in.
Beyonce, J-Lo, Kim-K,…..
And the Plain-Janes are just butt-hurt.
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“I recently put up a post about the way a lady on Channel 8 dressed, who happened to be black. Frankly, I didn’t even notice that she was black. I was shocked that Channel 8 w0uld put someone on the air that dressed so provocatively…..”
First it was disgust that she was squeezing her body into clothes, now her response after the backlash, is about the fact that she is dressed provocatively!
It is very clear what her initial motivation was – she just revealed herself in this last statement.
Demetria is probably a similar size to what Marilyn Monroe was but her physique is obviously proportioned differently – Would the same commentary be made I wonder?
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Demetria Obilor dresses to the same standard that most women on TV news dress to. If Jan Shedd simply thought that’s too provocative for daytime, then she would have picked that battle and not singled out Obilor.
Reading comments around the web about this, it’s frustrating to see people trying to frame it as a “curvy vs. slim” issue or a “dress too revealing” issue. Sure, Shedd might have been jealous of women like Obilor and the attention they get, she’s probably also conservative enough to be vaguely upset by the way women on TV news are expected to dress for ratings… but there’s a reason she was moved to post about Obilor in particular, a reason that she got butt hurt enough to set judgement aside and attempt to body shame Obilor publicly.
Jan Shedd felt the overwhelming need to put Demetria Obilor “in her place” for being a successful woman of color that happens to be curvy and not the other way around.
This is Patrice Brown all over again except you can’t even argue that most women in Obilor’s profession aren’t dressing exactly the same.
…and that other comment… about her hair?!? F#(K them!
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Damn.
She’s like a parking ticket….fine all over !
If there was ever a Black version of Roger Rabbit, She’d be Jessica. Tomi looks like a transgender Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Same dress. Different outcome
Fox news tv hosts dress in waaay shorter clothes and so do the women of Univision
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She puts the “D” in “Dayum!” As in, Dayum! Okay, some old saggy white lady with the ass of a 10-year old boy gets jelly and throws some flaccid shade. Meanwhile, a million eyes are drinking in her deliciousness.
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Demetria, you are beautiful and you are now on my computer’s wallpaper with the slideshow turned off!
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@ Open Minded Observer
“…she’s probably also conservative enough to be vaguely upset by the way women on TV news are expected to dress for ratings…”
I’m glad you brought that aspect of this story up.
Women on TV news (especially local news) all dress like they are headed for a party, nightclub or picnic because of the influence of media consultants. They feel that women dressing down makes them more “approachable” to their audiences. Thanks to media consultants, bright colors, bare arms, spike heels, form fitting and revealing clothes are in for women——-professional looking suits are out.
Men in TV news still dress like highly paid professionals. Both women and men are doing the same work, but are perceived differently by the audiences thanks in part to the way they present themselves on camera.
Jan Shedd chose to single out Obilor for abuse because of her obvious African heritage. There are dozens of other, Whiter, blonder women Shedd could have vented about. Shedd’s focus on Obilor indicates who she thought she could get away with criticizing.
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Shed is obviously jealous or she wouldn’t feel the need to publicly attempt to body shame a gorgeous woman such as Demetria.
Jan Shed is a tea party member who has written for that party in Texas so I would think she has a large following so its funny how she deleted her page.
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Laughing at that salty white women jealous of this gorgeous black woman. Salty, dried up hag.
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Stay mad Jan Shedd, i love how this hatchet face old hag is getting roasted on social media. I have been laughing at this old prune ever since this story broke.
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Jan is cock-eyed. So who knows WHAT she’s seeing…..
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Stay mad Jan Shedd, i love how this hatchet face old hag is getting roasted on social media.
On the contrary, the white feminists will be characterizing this backlash as an example of ‘lookism, ageism, chubbyism(sic), whatever ‘ism’ against women(what they really mean is white women). The men on here are a bunch of pigs!
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Demetria Obilor is
the prettiest female on T.V. That Jan Shedd looks like a cock-eyed dried up hag. And, she is just jealous & hating. There is a white female on another channel that is bigger than Demetria. I have stopped looking at Cha 8 because I have not seen Demetria lately. Just read that she is in Dallas, TX. No one misses Jan Shedd on TV.
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I don’t like how women on TV of any color are dressing as if they are headed for a nightclub either. And Tammy Dombeck was the worst! At least Ms. Obilor comes across as well educated and professional. Not the country redneck that Dombeck is.
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Ms. Obilor is Intelligent, attractive, and professional….and as a human-being, Black man, and American, I am extremely proud of this woman!
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I don’t care. She’s good looking. Channel 8 news has s new viewer.
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