that she doesn't end up modelling knee replacement or diabetes medications. I'm not slamming her. I hope the best for her including great health. But the body isn't meant to carry on at this size without consequences.

Ultimately, it's up to the individual to determine.

Coach has 2 knees, 2 hips. They pay the price.

They know the consequences, as does the size 22 model.

He was a slim and trim hockey goalie (never professional though but played 3 times a week for 35 years). Was never more than 20 lbs overweight (that was in his early 20's for 2 years, then he lost it all).

You can't always tell just by weight alone. In fact, many sports enthusiasts are the ones who end up requiring repairs to knees and hips, even the thin ones.

It's a shame they can't get new brains, considering that NFL players in their 50's have a rate of dementia something like 25 times greater than other men the same age.

they carry around? the heart and joint problems? It's not good.

As I said, it's up to the individual.

High lean body weight requires much more work from the cardiovascular system, thus cardiac problems. But that would be the case whether they played or not.

Their knees don't suffer from their own weight, but from the weight of people as big as they are slamming into them all the time.

You've obviously never played football or been around lineman. Nice try.

They don't have knee problems, but they have higher than average blood pressure.

Whether you have knee problems or not has far more to do with external trauma than with weight. At age 68, I'm a size 22 with no knee problems ever (my good luck in never getting them clobbered), and my post-menopausal bone scan indicated that I have the bone density of a healthy 26 year old.

Oddly, I have twin brothers three years younger who have had hip and knee replacements. They both have disabled parking permits as well.

I suspect that you've not been a size 22. Have you? Any struggles with weight and "appearance"?

I have. I have struggled with my weight for my entire life, starting when I was sexually abused as a child and had no control over anything but my eating. I suspect now that I thought that--my family being fat prejudiced since before I was born--if I was a fat child, my abuser would leave me alone. Being fat didn't protect me, but it started a lifetime of struggle with my weight.

I am now a Vegan. I have lost and gained hundreds of pound over my lifetime, but I am now stabilized. I wear sizes 18-20, and I have no heart disease, no diabetes, and no osteoporosis. I have not had any problems with my knees. I suspect that I have a touch of arthritis, which runs in the family.

I encourage you to examine your own fat prejudice. Even couched in benign language evincing "concern," it's not helpful.

Currently at 12. I was somewhat undernourished as a child, but now later in life my thyroid is chronically sluggish, so I am medicated for that while I try to keep daily calories around 1,100. I still struggle with weight, but my normal BP goes up, requiring medication, when I hit size 16.

I'm not "prejudiced" as you suggest. I feel bad for her if she's wanting to lose but can't. I said earlier in my posts that my hope is that she can manage this weight and her health risks. I'm not picking on her. But I am well acquainted with the health risks of obesity, including poorer healing after surgery.

There are health consequences to long term obesity. Heck, a friend told me yesterday that the second question she was asked after insurance when making an appointment for an MRI was "Do you weigh over 300lbs?" because of equipment limitations. Another friend's husband couldn't have his surgery for prostate cancer until he lost 60lbs for the same reason (robotic surgery table).

BTW, two of my last four boyfriends before I found "the one" were obese and morbidly obese while I was at a healthy weight. Other boyfriends in my past were overweight, underweight, short, tall, etc. My love, friendship, and affection for others isn't checked by a scale.
Peace.

she really needs to lose weight

She seems comfortable with her figure.

Health risks are definitely a concern, but it's really up to her.

Being that big is how she became famous.

Without all that weight, she'd just be... average.

But she is definitely too short to be a traditional model.

She has a beautiful face (which she is cluttering up with a hideous nose ring, unfortunately). But a thin 5'4" woman, however good-looking, would have a tough time getting a modeling job because designer clothes are cut for taller people (5'7"+).

she would be beautiful" based on facial attractiveness.

Because you think she weighs too much? Really?

health and well being?

than of concern.

Concern is rarely predicated with "ugh."

A common sentiment for concern that really expresses it well. Someone tells me they have cancer. "Ugh", I say. I hope they realize that that's bad and has a potentially devastating outcome. I'd better emphasize my UGH so they realize that and know I care! Maybe add gagging sounds.

that fat people are lazy slobs who stuff their face all day and are too stupid to know anything about nutrition and therefore must be told how fat they are (as if they didn't know) and criticize them for their 'crappy choices'.

No one thinks of medical issues that cause weight gain, mental issues, psychological issues, physical issues etc. If they do think of it at all, they think it's fat people excuses.

I'm obese. I've tried to lose weight since my early 20's when I gained it. I got kicked out (jokingly) out of a board certified nutritionists office because she said, "you don't need me, you know everything I do" (My doctor had sent me there even though I told him I was pretty well educated). All the women at my work who are from China, and are all thin, laugh at how little I eat at lunch. "WOW! how are you not hungry? your lunch is TINY!" they say as they devour huge mountains of rice and meat and veggies. My 22 year old friend from school used to say that she had never seen anyone eat healthier. But, people see me and assume I simply must stuff my face all day long. Do I eat junk food occasionally? Sure. I'll eat some potato chips now and again (my weakness). My aunt eats 2 entire bags every weekend and she's underweight. I eat far less junk than she does. Why am I fat?

I have PCOS. It's tough to lose weight. I have stomach issues that leave me in pain if I don't munch during the day every few hours. I try to keep the munching healthy. My 17 year old has a BMI of 19 (low end of normal) and easily eats 2-3 times what I do in one day and never exercises (despite my promptings. She hates sports or sweating, lol). My 14 year old is like me. Active. Barely eats. Has a BMI of 26. Some of it is genetics. For me, I get the trifecta. I get PCOS, genetics (my parents are thin, but my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather were obese) and an eating disordered (and narcissistic) mother who was terrified of being fat like her mother and controlled and judged every morsel that crossed my lips until I was a teen. So I have psychological issues around food too. I suppose if I just pulled myself up by my bootstraps and made better choices I could be thin and thus be worthy of being treated like a human being. Should I lose weight? The answer should be, if I can and want to, sure, if I can't, who cares, it's not their place to tell me if I should or not. I've learned to not give people like woolldog the time of day. They aren't worth it.

I've been a fan of Tess for a few years now. I think she's beautiful and I love her style. Except the nose ring. I have my nose pierced but not there, LOL. My 17 year old has that piercing. Not my thing. The tattoos, however, are my thing.

That woman is almost certainly going to experience some of them.

In the end it's her life and if she's happy with it, that's her business. But I sincerely doubt she's at a healthy weight.

Treatment is expensive; prevention is the key to a healthy life and a healthcare system we can all afford. We are becoming fatter and fatter as a nation, and it does not bode well for future health care costs. Again, prevention is far cheaper than "treat the health conditions."

I am overweight, and I am pre-diabetic, and you can be damn sure I am working hard to lose weight.

Btw, that model has a beautiful face and looks quite attractive... covered up. But her dimpled fat/cellulite is ugly by almost any standard except for those who think it is not kind to say so. Since this is a message board and these topics are discussed, then....yes, it's ugly. And just because cellulite is ugly doesn't mean that anyone has a right to harass her or bully her. One can believe against unjust discrimination without agreeing that morbid obesity is not a health concern. I let myself become 50 pounds overweight, and I and my family will pay a price for it if I don't do something about it.

but there are also many very healthy obese people. I am one of them. I have NO health problems associated with weight - and, as noted in my earlier post, I am more physically fit than most people whose weight falls within the normal BMI range. My office is on the 3rd floor - I climb the stairs daily (several times) to reach it without getting winded. My student assistants, decades younger with normal BMI, are panting more frequently than not when they pop through my doorway.

All too often, the assumption is made that weight is the source of everything else that is wrong - and rather than diagnose and treat the condition, the overweight person is told to lose weight. And when a person whose BMI is in the normal range has conditions presumed to be connected with weight - because of the strong mental link between the two - doctors often have no options to offer short of dumping massive quantities of medication at the problem.

My spouse - normal BMI - has Type II diabetes. The counseling session our insurance company required following her diagnosis focused almost entirely on losing weight. She received little information about how to eat properly aside from minimizing calories. While it is likely she would need metformin to maintain her blood sugar in the appropriate range, because the entire focus of the dietary counseling was on losing weight - which differs from eating to maintain weight but control blood sugar. And losing weight would not have been a healthy option for her.

She also has high cholesterol (managed by medication) and high blood pressure (managed by medication). Both strongly linked in doctors minds to weight - so the options are diets which are designed to cause weight loss or pharmaceutical management.

While some - perhaps even many - overweight people are also unhealthy, many of us are not. And the assumption that we would be healthier doing yo-yo dieting (the nearly inevitable result of trying to lose weight) is incorrect.

Obesity comes at a high cost.

There are people who smoke who don't get cancer or emphysema or any other myriad problems that come with smoking, but they are still taking risks with their lives that non-smokers aren't.

If you are as educated as you suggest, you should know this already.

go to doctors for health conditions that have nothing to do with obesity, and rather attend to the symptoms and treat whatever conditions they may indicate, they are told to lose weight. Because the doctor does not pay attention to their symptoms, their conditions go untreated, ultimately costing considerably more both economically and in terms of quality of life - and at times even life.

Similarly because of the extreme medical prejudice, people who have health conditions that are often correlated with obesity - but who are not obese are also often denied appropriate care because the first (and often only) recommendation for a condition presumed to be caused by being overweight is "lose weight" - even the disease in that individual is clearly not caused by being overweight.

Each person should be individually assessed. Yo-yo dieting is harmful, as are many of the diets individuals desperate to lose weight follow. The vast majority of people who lose weight gain it back, and more - with repeated weight loss, comes repeated weight gain. For individuals who are obese and healthy, the damage done by repeatedly losing and regaining weight is far more costly than maintaining their weight. A far better plan is for each person, in consultation with their physician, to evaluate whether they are healthy at their current weight - and if so to encourage practices for optimum health and fitness at that weight. If not, an evaluation should be done about the relative health risks of remaining at the current weight v. the consequences associated with weight cycling.

Obesity differs from smoking in many ways, but one important way is that with smoking, even if you only stop repeatedly for a short periods of times, you are still in better shape than if you continue smoking. In contrast, repeatedly losing and gaining weight can be more harmful than remaining overweight.

Don't bother trying to be sensible. Nobody will listen.

"Only fat people have health issues!"

Those damn fatties, if they'd only conform, they would never, ever get sick again.

She's much less likely to have osteoporosis than thinner women. Note from some of the other photos in the set that she's pretty bottom-heavy, and that protects against diabetes regardless of weight.

However, she is clearly morbidly obese, which is not a particularly healthy condition. But again, her choice.

Obesity and smoking are both linked to a host of health problems.

I am overweight, pre-diabetic and have already had breast cancer. I want to be healthy, feel better, and live a long life with my husband, children and grandchildren. I was complacent about taking care of myself for too long, but I will not live in complacency and denial for the rest of my life.

She is confident and I think her body is perfect, curvy with a wonderful face. And her tattoos are pretty great, she has some American traditional work that looks well done.

Most real women don't look like the stick insects who mostly populate the modeling business. I don't care much for the tats and especially the nose ring, which is gross, but I'm old, so what do I know?

but everything else is A-Okay. She's hot.

Those tats are God awful. Course I am not a big fan of the tattoo. I find them completely distracting.

I'm scared to death she'll turn her head in my direction and there'll be a huge booger hanging on for dear life from her nose machinery.

but I'd pass on the rest of it. Good for her though. If she can sell it, then go for it.

Beautiful woman representing "the other" and she's fabulous and has exactly no fucks to give to those not on board her journey.

She is doing what a model is supposed to do - show the buyer what the clothes look like on the body, as opposed to the hanger. I wish more designers/manufacturers/shops realized the import of that purpose.

onto the body. I only say that, because weight seems to be distributed evenly throughout the body, and hers is not.

I do hope she is able to lose some weight over the next few years for her own health's sake.

From "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol":

"Weight isn't important the way the magazines make you think it is. I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she's four or five hundred pounds but she doesn't see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she's a beauty. And therefore I think she's a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do. Maybe she's six hundred pounds, who knows. If she doesn't care, I don't."

No amount of confidence can convince me that big nose rings and tattoos are attractive, though.

She is helping to redefine what beauty is in America and I am a huge fan. My girlfriend loves to watch this show where fashion designers compete against each other and I hate it because all the models look like 12 year old boys instead of women, I would love to see her on that show.

I don't find that attractive.

Big people buy clothes; big models show how clothes look on big people.

From the article: 'According to a 2014 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most American women are closer to Holliday’s size than they are to that of a Victoria’s Secret supermodel.'

It makes sense to me to use models that are going to give women who want to buy those clothes a more realistic idea of what they'll look like when they wear them.

The purpose of a model, and you ask any designer, is to make the clothes look good and make peoe want to buy them. That's why good looking, aesthetically appealing men and women are models.

There is nothing aesthetically appealing about a model that fat. It's gross. And so are the tattoos.

So yes it is her JOB to look good and when you put yourself out there as a "model" you invite scrutiny of your looks.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]

Her job isn't to make you feel happy in your pants.

is to be aesthetically pleasing...

is subjective and changes from person to person.

Or do you mean that her job is to conform to what media and a given society says she has to be?

Some do find her aesthetically pleasing. Some do not.

Is it right to have only one narrow definition of beauty? I don't think so.

aesthetic pleasure is not a concern at all. Her job has nothing to do with being aesthetically pleasing but rather with making the clothing seem appealing to those who might actually buy and wear the same clothing.
Buying many plus size women's outfits these days? If not, you are irrelevant to her employers.

They still use the waifs and skeleton looking models almost exclusively. This woman is obese. Not a judgment, I'd say fact. Most doctors would agree. Why can't they just find middle ground?? What so hard about that. I hate using the word average because people vary so much. But what's wrong with a model who's not either all bones or way overweight?

The woman here is pretty, regardless of size and I'm glad she happy. I hate the nose ring, though. It's gross.

as they look on those who wear size 22 & similar. For obese people who buy clothes, it might be nice to see them modeled on someone of similar size.

I just get the impression the industry does a lot of "either or or" with these models. I don't see a lot of in between. Of course I'm a dude and don't buy women's clothes, lol. So I imagine my views are skewed to what's flashed on TV or in a magazine I'm paging through. Honestly the whole fashion thing befuddles me...I'm a jeans & tshirt kinda guy.

For those concerned about obesity, I would say this:

1. Let's pour our focus, energy, and resources into demanding that the food industry and the food advertising industry offer up minimally processed, locally sourced, fresh food, and that our national diet isn't filled with sugar, grain, and over-processed crap from birth forward; that would help.

2. Let's make sure that all kids get PE at least once a day.

3. Let's invest in making sure that there are always safe places for kids to play outside, and do a public service campaign to encourage parents to do so.

4. Let's be honest about our fat hatred...it's not just health concerns. We aren't nearly as repulsed by the overly thin, until they reach concentration camp extremes. And for some, not even then. How about addressing our body prejudices? How about valuing healthy, fit people of all body types?

Meanwhile, as long as we have obese people in the population, we should be glad there are models for them. Obese people have to wear clothing, too, and care about being well-groomed. Have you looked at some of the models showing off "plus" sized clothing? They don't show what clothing will actually look like on a person the size they are selling to:

Whether you're a 32 EE or a 50 A, you can find something that will fit. Lady Grace is pretty good also.

You've made that abundantly clear in this thread.

I have a problem with people trying to normalize obesity just to be "nice". I have a problem with people pretending there are no consequences to that kind of obesity and that it's ok. I would prefer some honesty and hard truths. As a society we should not be moving to accept or normalize this. We are getting fatter and fatter as a nation and it's not a good trend for a variety of reasons. And it really starts with simply eating less.

Oh, no we won't. Because this is a fairly liberal forum full of folks who aren't bigoted, rude, insensitive and just plain nasty.

I'm not a professional model attempting to make a living off my looks.

I've been through this routine before on this site on a similar thread and I posted my photo and that shut everyone up pretty quickly. I don't see the point in doing it again.

All these people on here saying that this woman is "so hot" "beautiful" etc are expressing their preference and their judgments about this model's looks (if they are even being genuine and not saying these "nice" things because it makes them feel so noble and accepting and so openminded). They are expressing their preference and they have that right. There is nothing mean or bigoted about not agreeing that a fat model is "hot". And there is nothing "liberal" about pretending that normalizing obesity is a positive trend.

I know where you and two others are going, right now. You, and those like you, are why I am thankful for the IL.

the body art and nose thing i find distracting
not that she would ever give a damn what i think

We can expand (Heh. Pun.) the definition of what is beautiful but aren't we still saying that appearances matter? And if we agree that appearance matters, then why is it difficult to acknowledge that thin is desired more than weighty?

Just putting this out there.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

of Giselle and said, essentially, let's all pause and admire this beautiful woman's body.....I don't think spending a thread objectifying her would be as well tolerated. Valuing women based on their looks is valuing women based on their looks.

They always make it look like boogers hanging down.

As long as she's happy in her skin people should be happy for her success. I find her beauty and self-confidence appealing.

Body image. I am not impressed.

Reason 2: The camera loves her.
Reason 3: We got clothes to sell and she fits 'em.

Ain't no ten reasons.

...of tattoos.

I also dislike shoulder tattoos on women, but that's me.

Something about the eye of the beholder.

beautiful size 22 women don't have the advantage of walking around with their jaws and necks photoshopped like that.

Love her eyes and eyebrows. Is it just me, or are strong eyebrows making a comeback?

and live in. I cannot even imagine surviving more than a few minutes in a body that size, much less embracing this 'look' and lifestyle. But, as they say, to each their own.

And then, there is the fact that her facial beauty is really just about wonderfully applied make up. She has good structure as the foundation, but the rest is really just art.

I think that people who perpetuate this type of look have very deep & serious emotional issues. It is a choice of course... but not a choice I'd make and probably not a person I'd choose to know as a friend. I tend to try to stay away from people who make poor choices like this. Lotta baggage going on there.

On the other hand there is a lot of money to be made by her, with this particular combination of facial beauty and obesity. Some guys are seriously into this and pay big money in the fetish thing.

I guess I really just feel pity for her. The price she's going to pay in the short term health wise is going to far exceed the riches she'll make during her 15 minutes of fame.

Judgmental much?

And that makes it open for comments and some of them here are atrocious.

I think it took a lot of courage to do that. I don't think it's healthy but it's her choice and if you don't like it don't do the same.