"Representation matters", "Promoting obesity", "Fat shaming", "Health risk" were not all that is said about Tess Holliday gracing the cover of Cosmopolitan. Twitter was sent on fire, although; what isn't sending twitter on fire these days? As Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Eminem, Ariana Grande, even MGK have "broken the internet" within the last 30 days. Another spectacular trending into the top covers of the mainstream. And with everything trending there's a credit to be given to those against it. As approval and disapproval of a certain subject goes hand in hand into making it well known worldwide, ironically uniting two opposite to work together for a final result that neither side accepts. My name is Amir and this is Deconstructing The Culture.

Tess Holliday told the haters to "kiss her ass" on Cosmopolitan's August 29 issue. In an depth talk about her struggle, depression, the me too movement, fashion industry, and how she finally came to love herself. In an article that I'm sure most of the people supporting and attacking haven't read, you get to know a person. A beautiful woman, even we disagree on health issues and what's really being promoted. A beautiful woman that even if you disagree with regarding actually thinking she's physically beautiful and all the rights to you for doing so. But if we were to disagree on the outside appearance we must agree that in the end it is the depth of a person and that person's personality finishes the painting of beauty whether be bringing the ratings up or down.

Acceptance And Importance of Representation

Here's Good Morning America's report on it

"Representation matters" trended worldwide although as we covered before what hasn't trended? But it was in showing of support to Cosmopolitan's decision to feature her. First of all let's be honest with ourselves, we should be happy that anyone in this world with a disadvantage, self-caused or not, is getting a job. I'm not blaming Tess Holliday for being who she is, and for getting paid for a job she chose to do. It's very admirable for me that she chose to pursue that career despite her weight, it is after all a disadvantage. But my admiration while goes toward the person it has nothing to do with the magazine as none of that was focused on. There was never "What inspired you to be a model" or "Have you had a second thought" question asked. But a strict focus on her being overweight. The fact is and this is the reason why I concluded that most people haven't read the article is because neither of the things they're screaming were brought up. She as a person, a content of a human weren't the debate. Her opinions on lack of diversity, the me too movement or even her journey to loving herself again didn't matter to most people speaking. It was the cover, and the cover is a cover. Stephen King's "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" wasn't adopted into a movie that is the highest rated on IMDB and nominated for seven Oscars because of the cover. Has anyone judged it to be promotion of crime? Then why is that happening here?

Let's start with representation and self-acceptance. Why do both those things matter in a Cosmopolitan cover? After all this is a magazine that describes itself as "The Women's Magazine for Fashion Sex Advice, Dating Tips and Celebrity News", their latest "serious question" is Who Pays for Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton's Clothes?. They go into a long article, writing a question then thanking US for asking it. Go on into writing details about cost of dress before answering the question. Such a long article for a simple question with 10 words answer at most. The answer is: They get paid to promote the clothes in case you were wondering. Maybe I haven't went through every cosmopolitan that ever existed. But I fail to see the cultural significance that they present. Why does representation matter there? If they don't feature a Muslim woman in hijab, does that mean my sisters don't exist? Or since I mentioned Meghan Markle. Does her marrying prince Harry means that black people are accepted? If you take a cup and fill it with water from the sea and there's no fish, does that mean fish doesn't exist? Simply put; NO.

Similar case can be said for acceptance really. How have Tess Holliday featuring on Cosmopolitan affected your life? As an obese man it hasn't effected my life. Just like having Jonah Hill on the cover didn't effect it either. And when I lived in Qatar, one of my best friends was a girl who's done modeling locally. At least three of her best friends, including me were overweight. It hasn't effected how we looked at her or how she looked at us, in the end humans care about content of who they talk to. Yes, science suggests we notice the fit and attractive much faster than the ordinary and overweight. In some cases the overweight aren't noticed at all. But that's first sight, are you going to see your neighbor only once in your life, schoolmates, people you hang out with. We've seen attractive celebrities get married and divorce rather quickly despite how attractive they are. Eventually it comes down to content and most people eventually learn that, those who don't go on to live a very shallow life. Because in the end, do you judge yourself by how you look and consider it to be everything you have to offer? If not then why are you are consider everything others have to offer? This is not a conclusion you pick up because of what Cosmopolitan says.

Who is waiting for the new issue of Cosmopolitan to decide what people's weight should be at in order to accept them? From a body positivity perspective it its beneficial as more people see themselves being acceptable, obviously that is true. Minus-sized or plus-sized are both adjectives describing two opposite sides of a set "norm" shall we say. And by agreeing to a norm is a good thing especially if we do it based on medical reasons, even a norm set by attractiveness standards is a valid one. But that whether the first or the other, why are we leaving it to cosmopolitan to set those standards for us? You haven't defeated the status quo, but rather celebrated the status quo finally letting you in. It's like the "cool kids" not letting you into the gang, then decide to do that and you happily go in. You haven't gained power, they still have all the power when it comes to the perception of your own self worth.

Promotion of an Unhealthy Life Style

Here's a debate on Good Morning Britain

Is everything we see a promotion of something? Is GTA a promotion of crime? Is Fortnite, Call of Duty, Battlefield a promotion of murder? It seems like whenever you put out a picture of something, make a video of something, play a certain game you're promoting a certain negative value. To be fair sometimes you are, but it is recognizable when you're promoting a thought, is it not? If you watch Fox News you get a clear idea that they're promoting conservatism, and if you watch CNN or MSNBC that they're promoting progressiveness. But that comes with a trail of words, conversation, debating, and many other recognizable forms. You know you're being promoted fast cars when you're being shown a fast car with commentary talking about how good it is. But is obesity being promoted with a single picture of an overweight, fat, plus-sized, or morbidly obese model, pick your term, the English language is generous, is that what's being promoted? This take isn't much different than the two before. Who do you think saw the cover and ran to the shop and bought 4 large chocolate ice-creams to have as dessert after eating a family sized pizza by themselves? Did that happen with you? If not then why do you assume that others are doing that?

Overweight is a problem that is caused by many different reasons, genetic, life problems, sometimes trauma, low self-esteem, and an alternative way to deal with reality. And one of those reasons and maybe others have resulted in one person being overweight. And all of those reasons occurred way before an overweight person appeared on a magazine. There are simply much deeper and more complicated reasons for someone to be fat other than someone on T.V saying "get fat, it's better". If that was the case, then why haven't all of those years with perfectly shaped people resulted in more people getting in shape as opposite to the fact that there are more overweight people than ever? In the middle of featuring all of those fit people there's a much stronger reaction to them, and it's not that often it comes out positively as people think.

If you watch the GMB video, you'd hear actress Tina Malone say "You would not put somebody on the front with a bottle of vodka, an alcoholic or somebody with drugs" To which I'd say in a way we do, don't we?

We see women on the covers looking dazed and confused

Smoking

Or feature alcohol themselves

Or have people with alcoholism problems on the cover

We saw many examples of Jennifer Lawrence getting drunk, whether when filling up for Jimmy Kimmel

Or talking about her drunk alter-ego on Ellen

Or even punching a guy

All of those were met with laughter and even applause if we're going to talk about punching a guy. Which she does while sipping wine and don't be fooled by the video's title describing it as a "bar fight" this is legally an assault.

But we even have well known drug addicts on the covers

If you weren't familiar with Mac Miller when he was alive then you might be familiar of his overdose death

This comes along with songs about alcohol, prostitution, drug abuse, even murder. Yet humanity haven't went extinct from alcohol poisoning, STD, overdosing, or just murder. Overall people are much more thick-skinned than some would like them to be in order to fit their narrative.

You can't simply decide what the narrative of the cover is even after the very creators of the cover and article tell the point of it. You don't get to skip over the article and jump into the cover and your perception of what it might mean to someone else and expect for your judgmental to be factually valid. There's a debate about the health risk of being obese and BY GOD did we have it? But in there was one indisputable fact. Obesity shortens your life span, making everything you do throughout much more harder. Both parties agreed on that, except one side was telling others how they felt seeing the cover. While the other simply stated how they think people would be feeling. And it's the side that called "promotion of an unhealthy lifestyle" that came out extremely presumptuous, and possibility of them being is extremely theoretical.

Magazines Are Magazines

If you read and hopefully agreed with my last deconstructing the culture post then you know that in the end those are strictly business that eventually cares along with of it's employees about one thing; sales. Cosmopolitan could come up one week and say it's okay to be black, gay, attack you for wearing green, or criticize you for wearing yellow, or generally wearing the wrong color to the season that we're in. They are applying the pillars of fashion to real life, in other words they're chasing passing trends. It's not the role or job of Cosmopolitan to be anything else other than a magazine that sells products for whoever is paying them to advertise them. They have no role beyond that and if you were to ask me, I don't think they should have a role beyond. Morals shouldn't be taken from a place that would only put out what they were paid for. Attaching so much meaning to them beyond is simply a mistake. One that is caused by an existence of certain emptiness in public life that we're allowing it to be filled by morning shows chats, glossy magazines, online videos or even posts such as this one. In the end you only come across these because of who pay for them.

A Deep Search for Meaning in The Shallow

We are all searching for meaning and purpose, or acceptance for who we are. Whether for our bodies, or intellectualism. Those answers are obtainable, but you won't find any of them skimming through a magazine but rather through interactions. Clearly body image is an issue, people look at someone defined as beautiful by a magazine and force themselves into agreeing, but that also results in seeing themselves as being somehow inferior. But this is something that simply will never be resolved by fashion. Because fashion shows wouldn't exist if they weren't feeding of your view of these templates with yearning and aspiration.

"Now that I'm on the other side and feeling better about my mental health, I'm able to actually say "Okay, I wanna like work out more, or do this, y'know it's..." You have to care of your mental state before you can worry about anything else" Those were the words of Tess Holliday to Good Morning America. Deep down you surely recognize that this is a meaningless debate, that people feeling positive about their body regardless of what look like is a good thing. People being healthy, mentally, spiritually, physically is obviously a good and you ultimately you won't find resolution in the public sphere or through commercial organizations such as Cosmopolitan and whoever ultimately owns that, or morning T.V and whoever ultimately owns that, or even the content of this very post and whoever ultimately owns that. It only comes through some inner connection, it is good if people that are not typically beautiful recognize their own beauty- it is also important that people remain healthy. However I'd argue strongly that this is an artificial debate that exists sort of primarily within the world of commerce, aesthetics, lifestyle, not about the visceral experience of being human, being connected, having purpose and meaning. All of that probably has no public utensil that can serve you, only an inner connection to meaning which can be assisted through community.