Tess Holliday thought she was doing everything right. At 40, the plus-size model says she eats well, works out daily, and avoids smoking and drinking. Yet she claims an insurer still told her she was simply too heavy for life coverage.
TLDR
Tess Holliday says a major insurer denied her life insurance because she weighs over 300 pounds, a decision she calls fatphobic and emblematic of a broken system that conflates body size with health and worth.
Insurance Denial Goes Public
In a recent TikTok video, Holliday told followers she had applied for life insurance, believing her lifestyle would speak for itself. She described herself as a 40-year-old, non-smoking, non-drinking person with no health issues, then revealed that the application was rejected because she is 5 foot 3 and weighs “over 300 pounds.” According to Page Six, Holliday said the decision left her “shook.”
Holliday said she has no preexisting conditions, does not take medication, and prioritizes daily movement. The rejection, she argued, had little to do with individual health and everything to do with entrenched bias against larger bodies. She pointed directly at what she called the “medical industrial complex,” describing it as “fatphobic” and claiming “the system is broken.” In the video caption, she told insurer AAA, “you did me dirty,” turning a private denial into a very public critique of how corporate risk tables can collide with real lives and reputations.
Holliday ended her video with dry humor, saying “lesson learned” and promising it would not happen again. The joke carried a sting. For a high-profile model whose image has challenged fashion norms for more than a decade, being told she is uninsurable touches the core of her public identity and the message she has built her career around.
Body Image and Brand Power
The controversy lands at a moment when Holliday has been intentionally amplifying her long-running “effyourbeautystandards” movement. Recently, she posed in a green bikini emblazoned with the word “fat” and added an on-screen caption that read, “POV: you lost weight but never made it your personality.” In another caption she wrote, “Imagine calling self acceptance toxic. Couldn’t be me.”
Holliday has framed “effyourbeautystandards” as a reminder that body acceptance is not a trend to age out of. She noted that she launched the movement more than 13 years ago and said the message still matters, “maybe now more than ever.” According to Page Six, she sees the insurance denial not as an isolated frustration but as part of a wider culture that treats certain bodies as problems to be solved rather than lives to be insured. For a model whose brand is built on resilience, each new incident becomes another chapter in a larger narrative about who is allowed to feel safe, covered, and seen.
Airline Encounter That Still Hurts
The TikTok arrives after another deeply personal story. Holliday previously told People that a United Airlines flight left her in a state of shock when a flight attendant allegedly turned a simple restroom trip into a ten-minute lecture about her size. She said her hip accidentally hit the call button, and when she emerged, the attendant began suggesting that losing weight would be in her “best interest,” pointing out that she was traveling with her young son.
Holliday recalled the attendant comparing her to his sister, who he said was “very, very large” and had faced discrimination on a recent flight. She said he continued by warning that the long-term effect of extra weight on their bodies “isn’t good for our health.” Holliday remembered feeling frozen, torn between protecting her child from a scene and absorbing comments that felt painfully personal. “You do not say things like that to people,” she later stressed, explaining that she eventually ended the conversation when another passenger approached the restroom.
After the incident, she said she reported what happened to United. She added that she did not want the employee to lose his job, only for the airline to address the issue and consider sensitivity training. That response mirrors her approach to the insurance denial. Holliday is not just defending her own dignity. She is using her platform and her public image to force companies and audiences to confront how much power is hidden in a single assessment of someone’s body.
Join the Discussion
Do Tess Holliday’s stories about insurance and air travel change how you think about the way companies weigh risk, health, and body size for customers and their families?
References
