"A magazine like that has never put someone like me, an actual fat body, on the cover of a magazine.

Bearbearmount Feb 21, 2021

"To be on a glossy where you can actually see my body, they haven't altered how I look, makes me really, really proud. It not only meant a lot to me, but the work that I'm doing, which would therefore impact millions of bodies that look like mine.... I'm saying that I love myself and because that happens to be coming from a fat body and a bigger body like mine, people then equate it saying 'I'm promoting obesity and that I'm unhealthy.' Even if it was what I do with my body it's no-one's business."


Said Tess Holliday, quoted at BBC.

Here's the cover:

Yes, that's a Miss Piggy tattoo on the right forearm.

What to make of the top story, "Is Success an Illness"? I can't find the article on line, so you'll just have to go with the title and its context on that cover. And the subtitle: "The high-fliers 'killing it' at work." And I'd put that in the context of this NYT article, "How to Retire in Your 30s With $1 Million in the Bank/Fed up with their high-pressure jobs, some millennials are quitting and embracing the FIRE movement. (It stands for financial independence, retire early)":
Carl Jensen experienced what he calls “the awakening” sometime around 2012. He was a software engineer in a suburb of Denver, writing code for a medical device. The job was high-pressure.... Mr. Jensen was making about $110,000 a year and had benefits, but the stress hardly seemed worth it. He couldn’t unwind with his family after work; he spent days huddled over the toilet. He lost 10 pounds.
He was losing weight. He figured out how to retire at 43. No word on his current weight. Hey, this is a great article on a subject I love and it does mention the old book I would have called it remiss not to mention. So I'll do a new post about this article. Please save you comments on the precise topic of retirement and concentrate on the fat cover model and what it means. (My tag for the subject has always been "fat," and I've been criticized for it, but I believe that calling fat "fat" has been the right word ever since the 1970s, when I picked up the book "Fat Is A Feminist Issue" at a friend's house and read it straight through while she was cooking dinner. And I note that Holliday said "fat" — "someone like me, an actual fat body.")

Here's Cosmo's own story about Holliday. Her Instagram hashtag campaign is #effyourbeautystandards. From the Cosmo article:
The five-foot-three model explained: "I was a US size 16 to 18 my entire life before I had Rylee [her first son, who she had at 20]. I look back on those photos now and I don’t wish I was that size, but what I wish is that I loved myself 120 pounds ago.... I’m at the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life now and it took me being the heaviest to finally love myself... I have had people say to me: 'Shut up already with your diversity. You’ve already made it.' But I’m not talking about me and my career. I’m talking about the tonne of models out there who don’t have the opportunity because they don’t have three million followers on social media."
Tonne? Is it just British Cosmopolitan? Yes. At American Cosmopolitan, I'm reading "Can You Tell None of These Balmain Models Are Real?/Take a closer look":
I confess to staring at the picture long enough to muse about getting my haircut like the one on the right. It didn't occur to me that these weren't real people until I read the headline. That's how ruined my mind is! Despite reading "Fat Is a Feminist Issue" in the 1970s.