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This is still a fashion win for Tess and "plus sized" women everywhere and a game changer in the fashion industry.
In January Anna Shillinglaw, founder and managing director of Milk Model Management, signed Tess Holiday.
According to Anna, Milk is currently the only agency with a model of Tess’s size.
At a UK size 22 (that’s a size 46 in South Africa) Tess Holiday, is making it her mission to make #effyourbeautystandards, a campaign started in 2013 that inspires people of all shapes and sizes, a success.
Tess actively promotes the hashtag and encourages women everywhere to use it when captioning their selfies.
I was trawling the internet trying to gather information about Tess Holiday, formally known as Ryann Hoven, and the reasons as to why she is possibly a major factor in the age-old fashion industry weight debate.
However, some of the commenters were more concerned with her weight, claiming that a person as large as Tess is "unhealthy" and young women should not strive to be like the 29-year-old.
I’ve seen countless posts of Tess exercising. So who can say that she’s unhealthy? Yes she’s bigger than many people I know. I’m a size 30, but based on her Instagram, Tess might just be healthier than I am. She takes care of herself and is a budding role model.
So what do these comments about health have anything to do with Tess? I assume the issue is not so much about health, but more about weight. Does her size 22 body not meet the health requirements?
My main problem is not the weight issues, rather how the media is choosing to market "plus sized" women. For instance "real women have curves", so the woman that don’t have them are not real?
Why should skinny people be ashamed to make larger women feel better and vice versa? This is actually the biggest reason why I personally don’t stand behind any of these campaigns.
In fact, all these campaigns should be changed to Real Women Breathe, because we are alive in our everyday bodies. Campaign that, society.
