Stranger In Doctor's Waiting Room Can't Keep Her Opinion To Herself, Fat-Shames A Famous Model, Gets Shut Down

Well-known American model Tess Holliday is going viral on Instagram for a video that she shared. The 36-year-old LA-based body positivity activist and the founder of ‘Eff Your Beauty Standards’ shared how she shut down a woman criticizing her for her weight while waiting for an appointment at the doctor’s office with a couple of very snappy comebacks.

The video quickly gained popularity, and at the time of writing sits at over 144k views. It also sparked an important discussion about how even some of the most recognizable celebrities can still bear the brunt of body shaming. Scroll down to watch Tess’ full video, dear Pandas. When you’re done, let us know in the comments what you thought of the entire situation and if you would have done anything differently.

Bored Panda reached out to Hollywood-based celebrity expert Mike Sington for a few comments on how stars ought to react to their critics.

"My advice on what to do with haters and critics either online or in person is to always ignore them. Once you respond and engage with them, you’re expending unnecessary energy feeding into the hate. There are exceptions, however. If you feel your response can protect others and defend a larger group, you may feel a response is a responsibility you can’t ignore," he told us.

According to celebrity expert Mike, the more popular a celebrity is, the more haters they're going to have. Scroll down for the rest of our interview with him.

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Celebrity expert Mike, from LA, told Bored Panda that having haters "comes with the territory of being in the public eye." In short, the more popular you are, the more critics you will likely have. However, there is also an upside to being well-known.

"On the flip side though, the more popular a celebrity is, the more admirers they’re going to have too, so it’s certainly not all bad," he said.

Bored Panda also wanted to get Mike's opinion on why some people like to make fun of stars. "People love to make fun of celebrities in an attempt to get a response. Often, that’s the only reason they’re doing it. Somehow, it validates their existence if they can get a high-profile person to respond to them. If you think about it, it’s kind of sad."

Tess immediately drew her critic’s attention to the fact that she’s doing pretty well as a world-renowned model. In fact, she’s so well-known, she has a whopping 2.5 million fans on Instagram and another half a million on TikTok.

However, the line that made a lot of internet users do a double-take was when the woman criticizing her said, “You know, I just stop eating when I'm not hungry anymore.” Tess came back with: “Bodies are weird.” Then the nurse called her name and that was the end of that interaction.

The model revealed last May that she struggles with anorexia. “People said I was lying. There are people who believe I was saying this to get attention. I’ve had some people say, ‘You’re doing this to stay relevant.' I laugh because I know it’s untrue, but it’s so indicative of what a large problem this is,” Tess wrote on Today about how people reacted to this piece of news.

“I feel grateful that I’m tough enough to talk about this, but I’ve since taken a lot of steps backwards in my recovery. I’ve regressed. I haven’t eaten today. It’s 11 o’clock and I’ve had two sips of coffee, and I feel sick. This has been extremely hard on my mental and physical health.”

Tess believes that people should be able to eat as much as they want and whatever they want without being criticized. She also embraces the word ‘fat’ and thinks that a woman’s size should not dictate their fashion choices.

This isn’t the first time that Bored Panda has featured model Tess. You’ll find our previous article about her very first modeling photoshoot right here.