So, recently Tess Munster has been signed with Milk Model Management. If you don't know who Tess Munster is, you might not be paying attention, or you simply might not care about the contentious world of fashion. She is an alleged size 22 model, and the largest plus size model to be signed with a major model management firm. Prior to this, she had been posting her own photograph and doing tutorials on makeup, hair, and fashion via Facebook and other social media. She also started #effyourbeautystandards, a fashion/ hashtag that encourages size diversity.
Tess Munster is now a regular celebrity. She has appeared on the Meredith Vieira show, on NPR, and I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of time before Ellen DeGeneres asks her on. As you might imagine, she has been greeted with smiles and flowers and claps of encouragement.
Wait, no, just kidding. What I actually meant to say is that she has been greeted with the same kind of bullying that caused her to drop out of high school initially. Due to the prevalence of social media, these haters that are going to hate have unlimited access to degrade what Tess is doing. Their main argument? The vague future health threat, although it is not so much a future health threat as a now health threat. I even read a comment from one person that said, "At least I know I will outlive her." because, you know, thin people are also psychic.
As much as they are "concerned" about Tess's health, they are even more , "concerned" with the health of our children. Won't someone to think of the children??? Apparently, Tess's 5' 5", robust frame is going to encourage overeating, sloth, and early onset diabetes. Using their own logic, shouldn't we be just as concerned about the vague future health threats that emanate from "underweight" models? Shouldn't we be just as concerned that girls begin dieting at age 5, and by age 10 are allegedly afraid of being fat? And shouldn't we be concerned, if health is our main priority here, that anorexia and other eating disorders are more prevalent in America than anywhere else?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that health probably isn't the real issue here. The real issue here is how threatened people are by the fact a woman of Tess's size could not only be become successful, but happy. It is threatening enough just to see a woman who is happy with herself and not working to manipulate herself to become someone she is not. Tess, and her thunder thighs, are working to break the sexist chains that bind women down, and tell us that we, as women, are expected to look a certain way, dress a certain way, and behave a certain way. Namely that we should constantly critique our bodies, faces, and physical appearance in an effort to never seem satisfied and always seem contemptuous of our selves.
If health is in fact our main priority, I have to ask: what the hell is healthy about that? The answer, of course, is nothing. Nothing is healthy about existing in a state of self loathing, regardless of your size. Nothing is healthy about constantly wishing you were someone else, or convincing yourself that you are a different person existing beneath the body that you have now. Here is Tess Munster telling us to love ourselves in the skin we are in and all the critics can assert is, "Please consider the children." In other words, please don't let our children become fat people who love themselves. Oh, the humanity.
