The modeling industry has started to make an effort in showcasing more plus-size people, but the general public seems to be stuck with thinking that plus-size looks one specific way. When someone imagines a plus-size model, most of the time they are just thinking of a slightly less thin person. It is easier for the public to accept someone as a model when they only weigh a bit more than the "traditional" model because they can still somewhat fit into our society's beauty standards.

Calvin Klein recently put a plus-size model on a billboard advertising their #MyCalvins campaign. Before I get into the negativity I saw regarding this billboard, I encourage you all to show the model, Chika, some love.

Her photograph was beautiful and I was disheartened when I saw that many people were agreeing with a fatphobic post made by Twitter user Dominique Samuels. She claimed, "Why do we need the morbidly obese to speak the truth in their Calvins? Out of all the black plus-size models that exist, you just had to pick the one that looks 5 minutes from diabetes to promote unhealthy living, Calvin Klein? You should be ashamed."

Interestingly, Samuels thinks Calvin Klein should be ashamed of putting Chika on their billboard when the only one putting anything shameful out into the world is Samuels herself. She seems to think that anyone that is overweight is not allowed to feel confident in their body and want to share that with the world. Our world is made up of more than just thin people. We are all different shapes and sizes and should be celebrated for our beauty.

Samuels is also spreading the extremely misinformed idea that you must be unhealthy if you are overweight. That is simply not true and it is ignorant of her to assume that Chika has diabetes simply because of her weight. If she really cared about seeing more black, plus-size models in the industry, she would be overjoyed at Chika's billboard. All she cared about was that Chika did not meet her narrow definition of beauty.

Chika's response to Samuel's tweet is the perfect comeback to her fatphobia: "Someone's mad they're not on a billboard." Samuels can be mad all she wants, but that does not change the fact that Chika looked fantastic on that billboard.