Model Tess Holliday is speaking out about a recent flight experience where she says she was instructed by a flight attendant to lose weight after he indirectly called her “very, very, very large.”
The curvy model recalled the event on her TikTok account, and said she was traveling with her 9-year-old son, Bowie, on a United Airlines flight when she got up to use the bathroom. While in the bathroom, Holliday said her hip accidentally hit the flight attendant call button.
An attendant knocked on the bathroom door, and the two began conversing when the model got out. Though the conversation started out OK, Holliday told her followers that things took a turn.
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The man began to speak about his own sister, whom he called a “very, very, very large woman” he estimated was “probably” Holliday’s size. He told a story about his sister running into issues with her weight while flying recently, and said that he “did agree” that she “did need to lose weight because she was very large.”
The flight attendant proceeded to tell the 40-year-old that he saw she was traveling with her child, and that if she “cared” about her child, that she would “do something” about her weight.
During the “crazy fatphobic” conversation, Holliday said that he also told her his German wife, who “weighed less than 100 pounds,” was so slim because she “doesn’t eat any of the processed crap in America.”
He also said that Holliday’s “main issue is in her belly region” and that belly fat is a “killer.”
“You don’t say things like that to people,” she said. “He said a myriad of other things ― the conversation lasted entirely too long.”
United Airlines declined to comment.
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“I didn’t really know what to say,” Holliday said toward the end of her video. She said that people have told her “You should have said or done this,” but the model explained she was “was trying to be polite because I’m traveling with my child.”
Holliday has been open about speaking about her experience as a plus-size person and model. She recently shared that she doesn’t think brands are hiring as many plus-sized models anymore because the body positivity movement isn’t en vogue anymore.
“I think that, collectively, our society has moved to a place where thinness is ‘in’ and body positivity and curvy is no longer popular for a lot of brands,” Holliday said during an appearance on “Good Morning Britain” last week.
“That’s what we’re seeing reflected on runways and magazines and in the media,” she said, adding that her “plus-size colleagues around the world — they’re not really working. It’s been really disheartening to see.”
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