When You Try To Defend Tess Holliday on Social Media

Sometimes I feel like I live in a bubble of body positivity. I almost never experience harassment or concern trolling for my weight. I'm pretty sure it's not just because my friends are awesome, but also because the people in my life are generally pretty good and aren't rude. Also, I haven't been down Hindley Street on a Saturday night in a while, haha. 

Tonight I was absolutely stunned to open up Facebook and see that a friend had commented on a post about Tess Holliday. This post was written by someone I don't know - but a quick stalk told me we have 14 mutual friends. Don't you find it totally weird when that happens? Like, how can I not know you if we have 14 mutual friends? During my teenage years I attended a really big church, so I think that's where the connection is. 

She wrote the following:

I'm not convinced with all this 'self love' stuff with Tess Holliday. Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely supporting ALL self love and self confidence but a part of 'self love' is 'self respect' and this girl is NOT respecting herself. In a day and age where we know know so much about health and nutrition (let alone being in an obesity epidemic) she's blantently showing no respect to her health or her followers. Not meaning to offend anyone but majority of her supporters and followers are probably overweight themselves and looking for some excuse as to why they don't have to face their own demons. Everyone's beautiful, but not everyone respects themselves and to me...that's not a beautiful trait. If Tess Holliday REALLY wanted to do something positive with her body image, she'd call out to all her followers and start a life transformation! Because the universe/god gave us one body and how disrespectful to let ourselves get to this point! All the supporters are just basically saying to the PLUS PLUS PLUS size model 'oh Tess it's okay your disgustingly obese, but so am I so we can take comfort in each other and tell each other we're perfect the way we are so we don't need to face the harsh reality of nutrition and exercise'.

If you really love yourself, you'd focus on your health. Would you feed your children disgusting foods and let them ignore exercise until they were this obese? I doubt it, because you love them.

Tess does not love herself. She loves that people are saying it's 'okay' to be fat. End of story. 

The friend who commented had written, "I 100% agree. She's not curvy. She's unhealthy and obese. She's the cover girl of what not to love which is an unhealthy attitude to looking after your body. If she loved herself she wouldn't destroy herself."

I was happily wrapped up in bed, the TV on, a nice cold drink nearby and I could hear Jeff in the shower. I was feeling happy, content. 

And then the bubble popped.

I just sat there, phone in hand, stunned. 20 likes. Her post had 20 fucking likes and one share. A chill crept up my spine.

I began to read through the rest of the comments. I was thankful that two people stepped in to offer up their disagreement but her response was not one of contrition.

I think you girls have missed the point a little bit...as I mentioned in my post - I'm all for self love and there is no way that I'm saying one person is better than another. All I'm saying is - self love is more than words and makeup... due to medication and diet (diet being something that could change if YOU wanted) im not talking about just food or even Tess's husband or child. Often that's a classic 'mum' thing to when they start a family...gain weight because they are giving most of their love and energy to their family and therefor they themselves miss out on the 'love'. I don't have a perfect body! And that me not loving myself completely. But I'm am always encouraging healthy diet and lifestyle to my friends and family. Tess isn't. She is obese and date I say much larger than a size 22. Sorry but it's rather disgusting.

 
Another wrote, "To be honest I have A LOT of friends who are over weight making really bad food choices. A vegan cake is still very bad for them, just because it is vegan doesn't mean it is healthy!!"

I'm sure you get the point, but the thread became this space where a group of women spewed forth their disgust over fat bodies and unhealthy lifestyles. As the comments unraveled, I felt like Bridget Jones when she's talking to Rebecca - the social jellyfish. "Being with Rebecca is like swimming in holiday sea full of jellyfish: one minute all lovely, next minute lashed as if from nowhere."

Like seriously, what is wrong with people? 

I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd had my say, so I stayed up and wrote a carefully worded response - stealing snippets from The Militant Baker and Gabifresh. No one will see it until morning. I wonder what the reaction will be. I don't think I care.

I think sometimes I take it for granted that I've lived and breathed body positivity for a few years now. I've read the canon of BoPo books (Health At Every Size, etc). I've educated myself and surrounded myself with the right people and blogs. So when this kind of vitriol comes out of nowhere, seemingly, and from people that are in my circle, I balk. 

There's nothing worse, nothing more smug, than people on their healthy high horse.

I was at work last week and someone had left a library book on the desk. It was a non-fiction book on smoking and its history. The page I opened up to said, 

Adolf Hitler launched the first anti-smoking campaign in the world. Magazines and newspapers were filled with warnings of the dangers of cigarettes. One magazine asked, "Brother national socialist, do you know that our Fuhrer is against smoking and thinks that every German is responisible to the whole people for all his deeds and emissions and does not have the right to damage his body with drugs?"

So there you have it. Living proof that you can be healthy and have "concerns" for how other people are damaging their bodies, and still be the world's biggest asshole.