Whitney Thore weighs 143kg and 3 million people have seen her dance.

Whitney Thore weighs 143kg. She also loves to dance. Really, really loves to dance. The joy on her face is contagious and her pure adoration for what she is doing is evident in every movement.

And so, earlier this year, Whitney – who works as a radio producer – was encouraged by her colleagues to film herself dancing. She then shot a number of videos and uploaded the series on YouTube. She called the series, “A Fat Girl Dancing”.

The series had millions of hits. One video alone currently has almost three million views. Take a look:

Whitney explains, through another video on her blog, that she used to be within a healthy weight range. But at the age of 12, weighing 52kg, disordered eating and depression started to kick in and for years her weight fluctuated (and that was very much brought on by polycystic ovarian syndrome, a hormonal condition which can cause rapid weight gain and make it exceptionally difficult to lose weight.)

For years, Whitney struggled with self-doubt and self-loathing until one day she decided to upload her dance videos on YouTube. As she told Insight this week:

I had to just finally start living the way that I wanted to and stop waiting to be the right weight. Stop waiting to look the right way to do what I loved and what I loved to do, and what I always did growing up was dance.

Through the videos, she’s received a huge wave of support from viewers all over the world who have seen her videos and identified with them somehow:

My inbox exploded with messages from all over the world from people saying that watching me dance had made them cry or changed their life. This was overwhelming to me –- and very telling of the society we operate in.

While some are OK with it and some are not (I try to force myself not to scroll through the YouTube comments), one thing is obvious: it’s different. It’s different and it’s shocking, to some degree, but it shouldn’t be.

It’s true – some of the YouTube comments on the video are absolutely hideous. They are cruel and they are mocking and they don’t see anything other than her size. But they further inspired Whitney to launch the movement she’s been working on – the No Body Shame movement.

It’s a movement that aims to eradicate all types of body shame. It’s aimed at men, women and even children. It’s for everyone who has ever been told that they’re too fat. Or too skinny. Or too tall. Or too curvy. It’s for everyone that has ever been shamed for any part of their body, no matter what size or shape they might be.

It encourages everyone to live their lives to the fullest. To appreciate their bodies and not let ANYTHING hold them back, regardless of what other people might say or think.

It encourages people to post videos of themselves dancing, even if they’re 143kg and it may seem like a shocking thing to do.

It’s an incredibly powerful movement. Take a look:

If you’d like to support the No Body Shame campaign, check out their website here or take a look at their Facebook page. The Facebook page is full of all kinds of incredible images and videos of Whitney dancing.