Cosmopolitan Cover Promotes Plus Size Women as 'Healthy'

“This is healthy!” reads the cover of the February 2021 UK Cosmopolitan magazine, which features plus size models and an article that argues that “wellness” does not mean “one size fits all.”

“‘Healthy’ can be a loaded word. We asked these women to open up about their personal journeys to reclaim ‘healthy’ as their own,” explained Cosmopolitan, which goes on to share the stories of “11 women who prove wellness isn’t ‘one size fits all,'” some of whom are plus-size models.

One cover featured influencer Callie Thorpe, who says that she adheres to the “body neutrality movement” — a movement that doesn’t focus on one’s own appearance.

“Plus-size people often feel like they can’t be part of the wellness space. We are trolled for being fat, then can feel excluded from exercise because our bodies don’t fit the narrative,” said Thorpe, who has amassed more than 250,000 followers on her Instagram account.

Cosmopolitan also featured yoga teacher Jessamyn Stanley, who says that yoga “has absolutely nothing to do with what you look like.”

“When I first started I was often the only fat person at classes, and frequently the only Black person, so it was very alienating,” said Stanley.

The yoga teacher, who has garnered 450,000 followers on Instagram, added that while she has gotten attention, there are still some drawbacks to it.

“I do experience fatphobic comments,” said Stanley. “Just yesterday someone said, ‘Do you really like your body? If I had that body I wouldn’t like it.'”

While Cosmopolitan promotes plus-size models as “healthy” amid the coronavirus pandemic, obesity is a condition that put adults of any age at an increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Cosmopolitan editor Farrah Storr defended, in a 2018 appearance on Good Morning Britain, placing plus size model Tess Holiday on it’s cover. ”

“What are you actually trying to achieve with this cover?” Piece Morgan asked Storr. “I read the interview and never once in the entire thing, with all the pictures in the interview do you as the editor of Cosmo even infer that this may not be a good weight to be, that this actually might be morbid obesity. And in Britain right now, we had the worst incidence of obesity in Europe by miles. We are a fat and ever fattening country.”

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You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.

Cosmopolitan Cover Promotes Plus Size Women as ‘Healthy’

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