Tess Holliday has called out society’s double standards after a dress she wore in January went viral months later because a “bunch of skinny people wore it on TikTok”.
On Sunday, the body-positive model shared videos and photos of herself from the Grammy Awards in January, where she wore a pink strawberry midi dress by Lirika Matoshi.
The dress, which retails for $490 and has accumulated more than 8m views on TikTok, has since been declared the “dress of the summer,” after it showed up in numerous videos on TikTok.
However, according to Holliday, when she wore the pink tulle gown for the awards show, she was named on “worst-dressed lists”.
“I like how this dress had me on worst-dressed lists when I wore it in January to the Grammys, but now bc a bunch of skinny ppl wore it on TikTok everyone cares,” the plus-size model wrote. “To sum it up: our society hates fat people, especially when we are winning."
In a separate thread on Twitter, Holliday acknowledged that she received some praise for the dress at the time, but that her initial argument remains.
“I’m aware some people said I looked nice in my Grammys dress & I never said I didn’t make best-dressed lists as well as WORST-dressed, but y’all are purposely ignoring the important part of my post: SOCIETY TREATS FAT PEOPLE LIKE WE ARE INVISIBLE,” the 35-year-old wrote, adding in another tweet that she has witnessed “fat bodies not treated the same” as thin bodies in the fashion industry.
“It’s exhausting, it’s frustrating, and it’s discouraging. As much as y’all are tired of hearing me talk about it, I’m even more exhausted having it be my reality,” she wrote.
In response to Holliday’s post, which was liked more than 254,000 times on Twitter, many people applauded her for speaking out.
“For real though,” one person commented. “You look beautiful. I hate the double standards.”
Another said: “I’m so done with fat-phobia! You’re a goddess and that dress was made for your body. Iconic.”
