Eugenia Sullivan Cooney (born July 27, 1994) is an American

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influe ...

and

Internet personality An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer, social media personality, internet personality, or simply influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social m ...

. She was born in

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and is based in

Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich (, ) is a town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast, Greenwich is home to many hedge funds and other ...

and

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. She initially began livestreaming on broadcasting service YouNow, eventually creating her

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

channel in 2011, which has garnered over 2 million subscribers. Known for her

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and gothic looks, as well as her eating disorder, Cooney's content mainly involves clothing hauls,

beauty Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, o ...

, cosplay and

vlogs A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in ...

of her daily life. She also regularly livestreams on

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...

Life and career

Cooney was born Colleen Cooney on July 27, 1994, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her first name was changed to Eugenia several months after her birth. Throughout her childhood, Cooney didn't have many friends and was often the victim of bullying at school, which caused her to switch schools multiple times and begin attending an

online school An online school (virtual school or e-school or cyber-school) teaches students entirely or primarily online or through the Internet. It has been defined as "education that uses one or more technologies to deliver instruction to students who are se ...

after her first year of high school. She transferred to

Connections Academy Connections Academy, a for-profit corporate provider of online school products and services to virtual schools for grades K-12, including full-time online schools with the name Connections Academy, in the United States and International Connectio ...

and graduated in 2013. Eugenia Cooney pursued

modeling A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

for a brief time in New York. After being asked to remove her online presence and feeling overcontrolled, Cooney decided to instead focus on her online career. Cooney began her online presence in 2011 by livestreaming on broadcasting service YouNow, later creating her

channel that same year. In 2013, she uploaded a video titled "How to Ratchetly Twerk", which went viral after being shared on

WorldStarHipHop WorldStarHipHop is a content-aggregating video blog. Zurawik, David.Worldstarhiphop.com makes a name for itself with shocking viral videos". ''The Baltimore Sun''. March 23, 2012. Retrieved on April 22, 2012Alternate link to the same article fro ...

. Her first three videos amassed over 7.5 million views. Cooney's YouTube content mainly consists of clothing hauls,

about her daily life, cosplay outfits, and makeup tutorials. She began livestreaming on

in 2018, where she has over 400,000 followers as of August 2022. She is known for her

style, characterized by her "extraordinarily long, dark hair, gothic lace dresses, and bold, multi-colored makeup looks." In 2018, Cooney starred in the music video for Niki DeMar's song "Anthem for the Judged". Cooney was nominated and a finalist for "YouTuber of the Year" for the

12th annual Shorty Awards The 12th Shorty Awards were held on May 3, 2020 via an online live stream event. The event was originally scheduled to be held at 1515 Broadway Theater in New York City, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was held virtually. The d ...

in 2020. Cooney resides with her family in

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

, and also had a residence in Burbank,

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

Controversy

Cooney has an eating disorder, presumably

anorexia nervosa Anorexia nervosa, often referred to simply as anorexia, is an eating disorder characterized by low weight, food restriction, body image disturbance, fear of gaining weight, and an overpowering desire to be thin. ''Anorexia'' is a term of Gr ...

. Her critics argue that her content encourages eating disorders among viewers, raising concern about her influence on her young fans. This is despite Cooney seldom referencing her eating disorder. Cooney is a popular figure in online "

pro-ana Promotion of anorexia is the promotion of behaviors related to the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. It is often referred to simply as pro-ana or ana. The lesser-used term pro-mia refers likewise to bulimia nervosa and is sometimes used interchan ...

" communities, where her videos and images are used as "thinspiration". Beginning in 2015, viewers began expressing concern around her weight loss, and since then several theories about her health, mental state, and home life have steadily grown. In 2016, a

Change.org Change.org is a worldwide nonprofit petition website, based in California, US, operated by the San Francisco-based company of the same name, which has over 400 million users and offers the public the ability to promote the petitions they care abo ...

petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offi ...

titled "Temporarily Ban Eugenia Cooney off of YouTube" went viral and received 18,000 signatures, although it was later removed for "violating community guidelines". In response to the petition, Cooney denied having a problem and said that she did not intend to be a bad influence. In early 2019, Cooney's activity online became more infrequent, raising concern among her fans, who thought she had died. On February 10, Cooney announced on her

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

account that she was taking a hiatus to work "on this with erdoctor privately." Cooney was assessed by medical professionals and placed under a 5150 hold requested by one of her friends before entering into a month-long treatment program. In July 2019, Cooney reappeared as the subject of

Shane Dawson Shane Lee Yaw (born July 19, 1988), better known as Shane Dawson, is an American YouTuber, actor, fimmaker, writer, and musician. One of the first people to rise to fame on YouTube, he began making videos in 2008 at the age of 19 and garnered ...

's hour-long YouTube video "The Return of Eugenia Cooney", in which she confirmed the decade-long speculation about her eating disorder and

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process for the first time. She now describes her experiences as "traumatizing" and claims to be "doing better" now than she was during treatment. Dawson's video on Cooney was viewed over 27 million times in a month. She was initially praised when she came back to YouTube, with people commending her for her return and being honest about her health. As a result, Cooney was nominated as YouTuber of the Year at the 2020 Shorty Awards. The reaction to "The Return of Eugenia Cooney" video was mixed, with some viewers and mental health experts raising concerns about the future of her treatment, as well as the possible impact on Dawson's mostly young, female audience. Following the publication of Dawson's documentary, Cooney returned to posting videos. Despite being initially praised for opening up about her struggle with an eating disorder, Cooney was soon criticized again for appearing to

relapse In internal medicine, relapse or recidivism is a recurrence of a past (typically medical) condition. For example, multiple sclerosis and malaria often exhibit peaks of activity and sometimes very long periods of dormancy, followed by relapse or ...

. Further, allegations of grooming and

predatory Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

behavior of young people by older men on Cooney's

Discord Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers".The developer documenta ...

server surfaced in 2020, prompting her to delete it in September. In early 2021 another petition was started on Change.org to age-restrict, or entirely remove, Cooney's YouTube channel and social media accounts, claiming that she promotes eating disorders through her "

emaciated Emaciation is defined as the state of extreme thinness from absence of body fat and muscle wasting usually resulting from malnutrition. Characteristics In humans, the physical appearance of emaciation includes thinned limbs, pronounced and protrud ...

" appearance.

Awards and nominations

Footnotes

References

External links

Eugenia Cooney
on

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