American plus-size model Tess Holliday posted a pretty scandalous photo to her Instagram this weekend in an effort to promote women’s equality.
It wasn’t a photo of her waging war against the terrorists or chopping down a massive kapok tree in the Amazon. That would be too sensible.
Instead, she posted a naked black-and-white photo of herself to promote respect and equality.
“Women deserve respect, whether they are completely naked or covered head to toe,” her husband wrote in the original post. “I’m too sick to march, so I worked on this photo we shot a few weeks ago to post today. No alterations to her body or bare face have been made.”
WARNING: This photo is not suitable for work.
Oh come on. I can’t be the only person who thinks this is downright insane. Sure, women’s equality is an important thing to fight for. There are plenty of women in the world who don’t get treated equally. Those women are in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan. They’re not plus-size models living in Los Angeles.
It would be one thing if Holliday were trying raise awareness for the mistreatment of women across the world. But she’s not. She’s fighting beauty standards and clamoring for compliments on her waistline. She’s not railing against oppressive regimes, hijabs and labor participation. She’s demanding respect by parading naked through the desert and using cute hashtags like #EffYourBeautyStandards. I’ve never met a women who gained more respect and equality by running around naked. I’ve never met a man who did that either.
You want to eat massive amounts of calories and gain weight? Go for it. You’re lucky enough to live in America where that’s allowed. Luckily, people in America are also allowed to disagree. Tess Holliday is not going to change the world by demanding people start liking plus-size models. She’ll get a Sports Illustrated spread, at best.