Tess ends the interview/ article with the comment: "What could we achieve if we stopped being so quick to judge and started giving other women the benefit of the doubt, and support them through their struggles?" Tess' ability to take from her fans, not donate any proceeds to charity, claim that her shirt selling business operated at a loss, and then try to make amends months later through disingenuous third party means is based in her white privilege because she feels protected. Tess' brand is built upon a racist system that allows her to use her whiteness to remain unaccountable and yet still look like a trustworthy person to invest in because she "made a mistake." The benefit of the doubt is not afforded to people of color. So when white women do something that borders on meticulous deception for financial gain, it's still seen as redeemable.

This isn't a question of if Tess Holliday is a good person or not. This isn't a question of if Tess meant to deceive her fans or not. This is a question of: Why is it so hard for the body positivity community to hold people like Tess accountable? We must recognize how race, gender, ability, and class play into our ideas of compassion and addressing issues within the movement. As a community, are we willing to risk hundreds of marginalized fat folks being taken from, ignored, and gas lighted, for the sake of Tess' image for our movement? What does that say about our ideas of infallibility of whiteness and social capital when we are unwilling to validate the people bravely coming forward? Similar to Rebel Wilson's 'Fuck Tha Stripper Police' bit before presenting best hip hop award to make light of police brutality and anti-Blackness, where is the accountability for the people getting the spotlight for being body positive when they don't value the other bodies (re: people) more marginalized than them?

In addition, we also have to understand how the foundations of movements work in opposition to media ordained leaders of movements. We can never expect for Tess Holliday to lead us into a new age of body positivity not just because she is white, cisgender, able bodied, and has access to economic stability, but because certain levels of white supremacist capitalism participation limits how much she can really change without risking her career and image. Is Tess willing to give up a paying modeling gig to offer it up to a brown skin Black fat femme? Would Tess be willing to give up working with certain high end brands by openly critiquing their fatphobic classist ways of excluding certain bodies from representation and overcharging for their clothes? Would Tess provide economic support to fat femmes of color who are educating her and the rest of the movement about our marginalization? Ultimately, if Tess is unwilling to risk her status for the sake of all of us who are going underrepresented, violated, erased, and excluded from mainstream body positivity and fat acceptance, then she will remain a willing participant within the current system that violates us. And we can expect that she will remain unaccountable while in that position of power.