Plus-size models can sometimes be just as unhealthy as thin models

Good chance you’re going to hate me after this piece, but I’ll take that for granted. Because something has been bothering me for a long time, and I’m going to write it off now. I really don’t understand why everyone can just rave about plus-size models while totally trashing thin models. That someone like Tess Holliday is praised and celebrated. That everyone can freely criticize the bodies of Kate Moss and the Victoria’s Secret models, and we love to shout that someone is skinny, but as soon as someone mentions the d-word (fat), the house is always too small.

Post a photo of any high fashion catwalk model on Facebook, and I dare you to bet that there will be at least one comment underneath saying: “Jesus, what a walking skeleton.” Or, “pfff so thin, that’s really not a sight, no man would want that next to him.” Skeleton, skin and bones, way too thin, ugly, “go eat a hamburger,” unfeminine – just pay attention to how often you come across those terms during an online round.

I really don’t understand why everyone can just rave about plus-size models while totally trashing thin models.

But let’s turn the tables. What if I were to respond to every woman with a size 40 or 42 that she really looks just like a walking roll? That she’s way too fat, that she could lose about 20 hamburgers, that she probably doesn’t even fit in one bed with a man, that I find those fat rolls downright disgusting – the world would be too small. Without realizing it, something very strange has happened; we have come to find it completely normal to bash very thin women, because we all want to make it clear that we stand for a “healthy body image” whatever that may be.

One of my best friends has been very thin since birth. But really very thin. In recent years, she has been taking fattening powders and pills, and proudly showed me her first fat roll a while ago (it was actually a skin fold, but I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I enthusiastically applauded). How do you think she feels that she can’t sit on the internet for half an hour without reading ten times that “men want a woman with real curves.” Or that “a real woman is a soft woman.” This friend wants to exercise to build more muscle but doesn’t dare to show up at the gym because she’s afraid that other people will think she has some kind of extreme form of anorexia.

But hate me all you want, Tess really does not have a healthy BMI. Tess is really way too fat. Tess is not a kilo healthier than the size zero models she is so against. And that bothers me.

No, then there’s Tess Holliday. Tess is 1.65 and wears size 52. This week it was announced that she has received a contract with MiLk Model Management and that she is the first model of her size to have such a contract. On Instagram she deals swiftly with “haters,” she tags every photo with the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards and wants to make way for more models like her. But hate me all you want, Tess really does not have a healthy BMI. Tess is really way too fat. Tess is not a kilo healthier than the size zero models she is so against. And that bothers me.

Thin models on the fashion pages of magazines would cause young girls to get anorexia, but don’t thick models like Tess Holliday cause young girls to get obesity? Last time I checked, obesity is quite a big problem; at the beginning of last year, one in three people in the world was overweight, and that number is only increasing.

The point I want to make is, first of all, that we should generally insult people online less. Thin or fat, it’s not nice to hear either way. The second point I want to make is that I do understand that there needs to be a response to models with an unhealthily low body weight, but that response should not be sought in the form of models with an unhealthily high body weight. Somewhere in between lies the holy grail, and I hope that we will eventually get there without too many ugly words.

—–

Edit: In the third paragraph, I talk about women with a size 40/42. In the comments on Facebook and elsewhere, it is now emerging that I would suggest that I find women with that size fat. That is not the case. Maybe it’s a bit awkwardly phrased, but what I mean to say is nothing more than to provide a contrast with the model size zero. Moreover, it’s about a hypothetical situation; that doesn’t mean that I actually think that women with that size are a “roll.”.