A Missouri news anchor has gone viral for her humorous responses to trolls' absurd comments about her curvy figure. Carissa Codel, 26, who anchors “Ozark’s First” morning news on Fox 49, has taken to TikTok to share comical videos in which she reads the outrageous comments left by viewers about her body in a newscaster voice.
“Dayumm Gurl, I want you to put a hurting on me like you do those midnight snacks,” she intoned in one of the light-hearted videos. “She’s like the only fat 9 I’ve ever seen,” she adds, laughing while reading another person’s unkind comment. “I bet she’s thicccc and tired of reading these comments,” she deadpans in a different video.
Codel, who is 5’3” and 180 pounds, told The New York Post that she started making the videos in August and that they quickly took off. Her joking reads of the often rude commentary have earned her a following, with over 123,000 followers on TikTok and over 222,000 on Instagram.
“It doesn’t affect me at all. I think that they’re hilarious…I don’t put up the extremely mean ones, but I like the insults that are very creative,” she said. “My family is very thick-skinned; I’ve never been bothered by a lot of that.” Codel noted that she has lost about 55 pounds over the past three years, which has lessened the cruel comments. “I find it so funny, like, ‘Oh, you think I’m big now, you should have seen me back then,’” she said. “I know who I am, and I know what I look like.”
While many of the comments Codel receives are body-shaming and offensive, some take a suggestive turn, with viewers lusting over the curvy news anchor. “Fe fi foe yum,” one commentator wrote. Another chimed in, “This is who Sir Mix-a-Lot was rapping about.” “Her parents gotta be beavers. Cause she’s built like damnnnnnnnnnn,” another wrote. While Codel was initially worried that her comical clips would tarnish her credibility as a journalist, she says they have actually helped deepen her connection with her audience.
