Tess Holliday

[5] Holliday was bullied from fifth grade on for her weight and pale skin,[7] having a disabled mother,[5] and because they lived in a trailer behind her grandparents' house.

[5] At the age of 15,[8] while she was a US size 16 (UK 18/20) and 5 feet 3 inches tall,[9] Holliday auditioned at a casting call for plus models in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was told she would be lucky to do print advertisements or catalogue work because she was too short and big.

[4][10] Subsequently, Holliday relocated to Seattle where she stayed for two years and worked as a make-up artist, hair stylist and creative director at fashion shows.

Then, following Hurricane Katrina, she returned to Seattle[10] (where she had some pictures taken for her then-boyfriend and posted them on Model Mayhem[11] in October 2009)[12] then she moved to Los Angeles in 2010.

[8] Holliday has been featured on "fatshion" blogs, she models accessories and plus size clothing lines, and was contacted to audition for Vh1's The Big Girls Club.

[14][15] She has shot a campaign for Benefit Cosmetics, worked with David LaChapelle, featured in Vogue Italia[16] and appeared in Nylon magazine.

[17] In May 2014, a video was uploaded on Vimeo called #everyBODYisflawless, which featured Holliday and fellow plus-size fashion bloggers and models Gabi Gregg and Nadia Aboulhosn lip-synching and dancing to Beyoncé's 2013 song "Flawless".

[32] In January 2016, Canadian plus-size retailer Penningtons announced that the brand has partnered with Holliday to release a capsule collection bearing her name under their mblm label.

[34][35] Since February 2015,[36] Holliday has employed a team of six social media specialists to help manage her message across the world.

[41] In the same month, she appeared on Plus Sized Wars, a Channel 4 documentary about changing beauty standards[42] and explores the fast-growing plus-size fashion industry.

[52] In late 2014, Holliday began producing a series of T-shirts with the phrase "Eff Your Beauty Standards", with some of the proceeds being donated to an organization that helps survivors of domestic violence.

"[53] Holliday admits that she did not know how to handle the logistics of the project,[53] was unable to keep up with orders, and takes responsibility for some customers not receiving the merchandise they paid for.

[55] "The system we were using just didn't work," she said, attributing missing merchandise to "one big batch that was lost by the post office" and "usual business discrepancies".

[53] In January 2016, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence's Development Manager Dina Coates Koebler confirmed, "A donation in the amount of $1,000 was made to our organization on 12/13/2015 by Ms.

They talked online for seven months before Holliday traveled to the U.S. to visit,[56] and in April 2015,[57] he moved from Melbourne to the U.S.[5] On July 5, 2014, they got engaged.