Does The Tess Holliday Magazine Cover Trigger You?

September 29, 2018 Ashley 0 Comments

By now we’ve all seen that Tess Holliday magazine cover, right?

(Now we have)

So, a big girl’s gracing the cover of the latest issue of literary chick drivel.

And, of course, the comment section features everything you’d expect to see.

Does she deserve to be on the cover of a magazine? Is she normalizing morbid obesity? Is it okay to be deathly fat now? I heard a comment recently that gave me pause. It was a stat about just how many Americans are morbidly obese now. The conclusion was that, because it’s such a high number, it is normal for America. And we should be normalizing it in the media. Good try, buddy.

But here’s the other definition for “normal” the judges were looking for:

“Or healthy.”

Which brings me to the next question. Does she deserve to be on a a magazine cover? And corrupt young girls into thinking a Costco sized diet is okay? Can she be a role model? Well, that depends on what cover she’s on. So far as I can see, she’s not on the cover of “Fit”, “Shape”, or “Health”. You cannot be a role model for any of those things when you are unhealthy on either end of the spectrum – waif or whale sized. To me, it looks like she’s on the cover of a magazine focused on fashion. And we all know the fashion industry has never been a healthy one. So this fits perfectly in line with that. It also focuses on beauty and careers and girl power. Homegirl’s got all those boxes checked too with her applause worthy career, femme energy, and what I’m sure are far better cheekbones than mine, hidden under the adipose side effects of her dietary lifestyle choices. No one’s saying she’s serving as a bariatric barometer for how we should look by being on Cosmo. Tess is not promoting weight loss, obviously. But she’s also not promoting weight gain. Or saying you should eat in a manner that has the side effect of morbid obesity. So calm down and golf clap for the lady. She’ll either go Honey Boo Boo’s mama when she hits rock bottom or she won’t. In the meantime, we can just take notes on what she is doing right and look to other folks for fitness incentive.

And if you feel yourself triggered by any of this, I get it. I am too. I’m triggered because no one’s putting on this oddity show of morbidly obese or bony flesh vessels with souls trapped inside of them to “normalize it”. They don’t care. They’re doing it to prize our time and money and focus from us. The question isn’t whether it’s suddenly okay to be over or underweight. The question is – if being out of alignment with health felt undeniably good and right… would we really need media – or anyone else – to validate it? Do you need magazines or actors to validate the things you know make you feel good on a sustainable level? Your spiritual beliefs? Your family? Your devotion to your dude or dog?

(Sorry, Charlie. Some troll on the internet said you suck. Off to the pound with you…)

Chances are, if you got upset to hear anything other than super big or super skinny is “beautiful” (whichever you prefer), then you know it’s a misplaced belief. You know it’s wrong. How do I know? Well, if some rando says something you know for sure is wrong (like that you’re a terrible person who kicks dogs, when you literally love dogs and esteem them higher than people), then you don’t get mad. You laugh. Because they (the judgers) don’t know you or your personal life, really. It’s a ridiculous claim. So you laugh. This is how we respond when we’re solid in what we believe. It’s so unshakeable that any opposition seems preposterous. This is why I can laugh when friends and comics tease about veganism. I know they’re being ridiculous. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it works wonders. (Especially when it’s unhealthy friends dishing the shade.) So I don’t need to prove it to anyone else. I can laugh (both with and at them… maybe mostly the latter). A false identity, on the contrary, makes us defensive. Why? Because we know it’s wrong. But identity is an internal survival construct. We take time to build it and we adhere to it with all we’ve got. Anyone who threatens it is the enemy, we think. Even though it’s all just an illusion we built. The magic is when we recognize that A.) maybe our identity needs tweaking because it’s literally killing us, and B.) we get willing to do exactly that. It’s a simple step, but challenging to enact. But in a way, it’s kinda like a magazine cover. If we don’t like the way it’s making us feel, we’re allowed to feature new and better beliefs on the front cover of our consciousness Cosmo next month.

So, if your shackles’re going up over this Tess mess, ask yourself why.

And accept that maybe it’s time to take a Holliday from your outdated dietary identity…