Tess Holliday

Ryann Maegen Hoven (born July 5, 1985), known professionally as Tess Holliday and formerly known as Tess Munster, is an American plus-size model, blogger, and make-up artist based in Los Angeles.

Holliday was born and raised in Laurel, Mississippi.

Her mother left her father when Holliday was a young child, and Holliday claims her family moved 40 times before she turned 10.

In June 1995, her mother was paralyzed and disabled after she was shot twice in the head by her fiancé, who was charged with attempted murder.

At the age of 10, Holliday and her brother moved back to their grandparents' house in Mississippi while their mother recovered.

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

She left school at the age of 17 and earned her GED.

Holliday has also alleged that her father verbally abused her for her size, but that her mother encouraged her to become a model.

Holliday has severed contact with her father.

At the age of 15, while she was a US size 16 (UK 18/20) and 5 feet 3 inches tall, 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.

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.

She then moved back to Mississippi and gave birth to her son (at the age of 20).

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

Her move to Los Angeles helped her gain confidence.

She became a professional model in 2011 while working as a receptionist at a Los Angeles dental office.

She responded to 'House of Dreams Model Search' by Torrid and was accepted.

At the same time, A&E chose her to be the face of documentary television series Heavy after being discovered online.

In June 2011, she became the face of the television show and was on an advert that ran nationwide and billboards across the country.

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.

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

In 2013, she started her #effyourbeautystandards movement on Instagram.

Holliday claims the movement shows women that they do not have to be a certain size to love their body (big or small) and that their size should not dictate their fashion choices.

In 2014, Holliday quit her day job at the dental office to pursue modelling full-time.

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".

In September of that year, she was interviewed by Jacob Soboroff and Meghan McCain on TakePart Live.

In March 2014, Holliday became the first model over size 18 to model Monif Clarke's clothing line after she was hired as the face of the latest campaign for her swimwear line Sea by Monif C - a line that is specifically designed for women sizes 14–24.

In the same month, she modeled for Torrid.

She also collaborated with the plus size clothing retailer Yours Clothing for the second time when she was officially announced as the face of their high summer campaign.

In January 2015, London-based modeling agency Milk Model Management announced that they had signed Holliday to their plus-size division, Curves.

They declared that Holliday had become the largest plus-size model of her size and height to be signed to a mainstream modeling agency, and the first Curve model above a size 20.

In May, she had her first agency shoot.

In May 2015, she was featured on the cover of People.

In September 2015, Holliday starred in H&M's sustainable fashion campaign alongside singer Iggy Pop, artist Daniel Lismore, sex blogger Karley Sciortino and blogger Pardeep Singh Bahra.

In the same month, she starred in Addition Elle's fall 2015 capsule collection campaign.

In the same month, she also confirmed that she was in the process of designing her own clothing line.

In November of the same year, she was involved in a fashion shoot for Marie Claire UK's December 2015 issue.

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

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.

Holliday also self-describes as a "body positive activist".

She embraces the word 'fat' and advocates that people should be able to eat as much and whatever they want without suffering from social ostracism.