Plus size modeling is what everyone is talking about these days. The times when you had to miss out on the opportunity to become a model is in the past.
Most plus size girls could identify with at least one of these ladies in some way. By the way, these are all professional athletes, so all of these women’s bodies are honed for their sports, even the ones who may look big to you. The bigger lady in the second photo is a professional weightlifter, her plus size has a purpose, unlike Tess Holliday.
If you google Howard Schatz female athletes, you can find the full series, where each lady has her weight listed as well as her sport. There’s one for men as well
Plus Size Model Weight
I resent the fact that if you aren’t model-thin or plus-size model proportioned, your role model is supposed to be a woman who weighs 200 pounds. This is not even an exaggeration.
I’d be okay with Holliday at the point where the fashion industry cares enough to include a girl who’s 5′1″ or a girl who is built like a basketball player, or a decent proportion of POC (or a combination of the above!) To me, that’s so much more important than giving visibility to someone who, in her way, is just as unrealistic as any other model.
It bothers me that fashion can’t be bothered to include anyone, well, normal, and thinks it’s more progressive to include someone clinically obese than someone who’s not tall enough to reach the top shelf in the kitchen.
Apparently, Tess is 5′3″, pretty much the same height as me. I recognize more of my own body type in either of the first 2 girls, and I’m far from tall or stick thin.
Tess Hollyday plus size role Model
People hold up Tess Holliday as an example of “self love” or “body positivity”, which really irritates me, for the same reason. Why do you have to be morbidly obese to be the face of body positivity?
Body positivity is about self-love, sure, but you don’t need to be obese to qualify. Why not show a mom post-childbirth, or someone with more realistic proportions?
Again on this, people describe Tess as “loving your curves” and being curvy. No. Someone built like Ashley is curvy.
Curvy Model Body Type
Curvy is a body type, not a size, and Tess doesn’t have it. If you want to support curvy women, why not use someone like Beyonce or Kim Kardashian? I’m repeating myself a bunch, but we should have representation for non model-build people that aren’t a caricature of self-love and a misinterpretation of what “curvy “ means.
For comparison, here are all the models stats, so you can really see what I’m talking about plus size modeling
Birgit: 5′11″, 120 pounds
Ashley: 5′9″, 201 pounds
Tess: 5′3″, 286 pounds
Where are all the short girls? And here are the muscular girls? Where are the girls who aren’t rectangles or hourglasses but aren’t fat either?
I recently saw a video featuring Tess Holliday. It shows plus-size women trying on clothes ordered online.
In the video, Tess clearly lies about her size and tries to pretend she’s the same size as the other (smaller) plus-size girls. That makes me not like her, personally. If you claim to be for fat acceptance/body positivity, but you lie about your size to make yourself seem smaller, you’re a hypocrite.
Some of this content credit if for Allison Hellman, a test prep teacher.
Hope you enjoy there read and when you are ready to become the sexy model of your dreams, go for it.