Aquarium says sorry for calling otter ‘thicc girl’

A California aquarium apologized on Wednesday for a Twitter post calling one of their otters a “thicc girl” and “chonk,” which critics slammed as racist.

“Abby is a thicc girl,” the Monterey Bay Aquarium tweeted Tuesday along with a photo of Abby the otter.

“What an absolute unit. She c h o n k. Look at the size of this lady. OH LAWD SHE COMIN,” the tweet continued.

While the tweet got thousands of likes and retweets, scores of Twitter users skewered the aquarium for “fat-shaming” the otter.

The aquarium later tweeted out, “#bodypawsitivity” and another post reading “work hard nom harder.”

Christine DeAngelo, the aquarium’s curator of mammals, spoke out after backlash over the original tweet surfaced — saying that Abby wasn’t even fat for an otter, adding that the photo was snapped at a bad angle.

“That’s not blubber or anything,” she told the LA Times. “It’s just the angle of her hips and the way she’s rolled. She’s one of our most photogenic animals.”

But many social media users took issue with the slang used to describe the otter, which they describe as having racial undertones.

“Please delete this tweet. It is offensive,” a theoretical physicist at the University of Washington, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, tweeted from her now-private account, reported the Sacramento Bee.

“I’m certain that @MontereyAq didn’t realize that they were basically comparing Black women to animals by using AAVE developed to talk about Black women’s bodies to describe an animal. But that’s pretty bad, MBA.”

Twitter user Post-Surgical Agitator tweeted criticism in the same vein.

“There’s a reason we tell non-AA folks to avoid using AAVE: Our language, humor, and cultural references are borne from some of humanity’s worst atrocities. If you haven’t endured that pain, you can’t know where the faultlines in our expression are. Please do better next time,” read the tweet.

The aquarium issued the following apology in the wake of the outrage: “Hey everyone. It has come to our attention that some of the references in this tweet are problematic and insensitive. We’re posting here in the thread so that people who have engaged with this tweet will join us in our learning moment,” the tweet read.

“If our tweet alienated you, please know that we are deeply sorry, and that we offer our sincerest apologies. If you follow our feed, we often reference popular memes to talk about the ocean. In this case, the memes used had connotations we were unaware of until now,” the apology continued.

“In particular, several terms referenced originated from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and specifically reference Black women’s bodies. Using them in a sea otter meme without that background makes insinuations we never intended. We need to do better,” the aquarium said.