Yahoo Lifestyle World’s first size 22 supermodel Tess Holliday lands cover of People magazine
Picture: Courtesy People magazine
Model Tess Holliday has 800,000 Facebook fans and 663,000 followers on Instagram. Now, the 29-year-old can add landing the cover of People magazine to her list of accomplishments, starring on the front of the title’s latest issue.
"My phone still hasn't stopped ringing,” she told People. "It's good, but it's a lot!"
It’s the latest success in what has been a bumper year for Holliday, a size 22, who, in January, was secured by London’s MILK Management, becoming the largest plus-size model to be signed to a mainstream agency.
Holliday regularly takes to her social media accounts to empower women to embrace themselves, having created the hashtag #effyourbeautystandards. Holliday tells the magazine that it was only after building a global fan base through social media that the modelling world sat up and took of the Mississippi native. "After leaving school, I went to many discouraging auditions where I was told I was too short (5-foot-5) and too fat (size 22) to be a model. Thanks to the power of the Internet, I was able to create my own destiny. I started posting photos of myself in my underwear, then in bathing suits and other clothes that I liked but weren’t considered suitable for large and curvy women… My photos led to real jobs."
Holliday, who will also be blogging for the magazine, revealed that her mother has always been her greatest supporter, writing: "She always believed in me. Even when I was bullied in school and pushed into lockers, she fought for me. When the school did nothing, she yanked me out and encouraged me to follow my own path.”
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