Fat models can be just as unhealthy as skinny models

There is a good chance you will hate me after this article but I’ll take my chances. Something has been bothering me for a long time and I’m going to write about it now. I really don’t get that people are allowed to sing in praise of plus-size models and bash skinny models in the process. That someone like Tess Holliday is being praised and bejeweled. That everyone is full of piss and vinegar about Kate Moss and the Victoria’s Secret models’ bodies and we love to scream that a person is too skinny, but as soon as someone uses the F-word (fat), they are demolished where they stand.

Post a picture of any high fashion catwalk model on Facebook and I’ll bet you get at least one comment saying: ‘Jeez, she’s a walking skeleton.’ Or, ‘Wow, someone that skinny looks really ugly, no man would want that in his bed.’ Skeleton, skinny bitch, ugly, Go eat a burger, unfeminine – just look and see how often you’ll find these words when you go online.

What about switching it around. What if I were to comment on every picture of a women wearing a size 10 or 12 and say she was a walking sausage? That she’s way too fat, could stand to lose some 20 hamburgers, probably doesn’t fit into one bed with a man, that I am disgusted by those fat rolls? Well, the world would stop turning. Without us noticing, something really weird has happened. We’ve come to think it is normal to bash skinny women because we all want to make clear we favor a ‘healthy body image’. Whatever that may be.

One of my best friends has been really skinny from birth. I mean really really skinny. In the past couple of years she has been taking fattening pills and powders and she was recently proud to show me her first fat roll (a skin fold, really, but I didn’t want to disappoint her so I duly admired it). How do you think she feels about not being able to spend 30 minutes on the internet without reading that ‘men want women with real curves’? Or that ‘a real woman is a soft woman’. My friend really wants to go to the gym to build muscle but she’s afraid to go there because people might think she is anorexic.

So let’s have a look at Tess Holliday. Tess is 1.65 m tall and wears a size 22. This week, her contract with MiLk Model Management was announced, stating that she is the first model of her size that signed such a prestigious contract. Every one of her Instagram posts ‘bashes haters’, using the hashtag #EffYourBeautyStandards and hoping to pave the way for more models just like her. But hate me all you want, Tess really doesn’t have a healthy BMI. Tess really is very overweight. Tess is not one pound healthier than the size zero models she criticizes. And that really bothers me.

It is said skinny models in fashion spreads encourage young girls to become anorexic, so how can it be that fat models like Tess Holliday do not encourage young girls to become obese? Last time I checked, obesity is a really big problem. Early last year one in three people around the world was overweight and this is only becoming worse.

The first point I want to make is that we should stop insulting people online. Skinny or fat, neither are nice things to say. The second point I want to make is that I do understand that we need to solve the problem of models who are underweight to the point of being unhealthy. But we shouldn’t seek the answer in models who are overweight to the point of being unhealthy. The Holy Grail lies somewhere in between and I hope we will get there one day without too many insults.