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Tess Holliday is opening up about her challenges in securing life insurance.
In a TikTok video posted on Thursday, February 26, Holliday expressed her surprise at the difficulties she faced. “I genuinely thought I could qualify for life insurance as a 40-year-old who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and has no health issues,” she remarked. “That was a mistake on my part. I acknowledge that.”
She further explained, “Yes, I am 5 feet 3 inches tall and weigh over 300 pounds, and apparently, that disqualifies me from getting life insurance. Despite working out daily and having no pre-existing conditions or medications, this is the reality. It’s frustrating, but I recognize that the medical and insurance systems are inherently biased against larger bodies.”
Holliday admitted that she ultimately accepts responsibility for attempting to obtain life insurance under these circumstances.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” she concluded. “This is not something I’ll attempt again.”
Tess Holliday is asking the public to stop criticizing her weight. The plus-size model, 38, posted a TikTok video on Monday, April 15 to address the negative messages that she constantly receives. “One thing I’m learning on this extremely fatphobic app is the minute you mess up, you can count on everyone to tell you […]
It is not uncommon for insurance companies to deny applicants based on their body mass index (BMI) or weight, despite recent studies showing that the metric is flawed and does not adequately assess a person’s health. One 2024 study found that 80 percent of patients living with obesity experienced stigma, judgment and shame while attempting to navigate various healthcare settings.
Holliday has been a fierce body positive advocate since she launched the #effyourbeautystandards movement via Instagram in 2013.
@tessholliday AAA you did me dirty man #lifeinsurance #oops #advice #lol
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“We started Eff Your Beauty Standards in 2013 because we were tired of being told our bodies were problems to fix instead of lives to honor,” the movement’s official Instagram account wrote on February 17, announcing a relaunch of the group’s efforts more than a decade after its start.
“What began as a hashtag became a place where people could feel seen,” the post continued. “Then it became a community. Then a movement. We went quiet, not because the work was done, but because we needed time to grow, to heal, and to imagine what this could become in a world that keeps trying to erase us.”
The post continued, “We are coming back now because diversity, bodily autonomy, and human rights are under attack. The work is far from over and the people who found safety here deserve that space again.”
Once upon a time, a famous person might lose weight with alarming speed and say with a straight face that she’d done it by eating a balanced diet of smaller portions. Though we regular folks wanted that to be true — it gave us hope we could follow their simple steps and shrink ourselves — […]
Currently, Hollywood is arguably experiencing a resurgence of thinned-down looks as semaglutides, a.k.a GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro gain in popularity and drop in price. Everyone from Serena Williams to Rebel Wilson, Amy Schumer and Lizzo have been open about using the weight loss drug to shrink in size and manage their mental and physical health.
“There are real-life, real-world human impacts for cultural shifts around the pro-weight-loss culture that we’re in right now because of GLP-1s and the way they’re being marketed,” cultural critic Virgie Tovar, an ambassador for Weight Stigma Awareness Week, shared via Instagram after she experienced fat-shaming while attending New York Fashion Week 2025.
“Ending weight stigma is the only way to end weight stigma,” Tovar wrote in another Instagram post on January 29. “Asking people to shrink their bodies is NOT ending weight stigma. It is REINFORCING weight stigma.”