  The stellarator as a concept of magnetic confinement fusion requires careful
design to confine particles effectively. A design possibility is to equip the
magnetic field with a property known as quasisymmetry. Though it is generally
believed that a steady-state quasisymmetric equilibrium can only be exact
locally (unless the system has a direction of continuous symmetry such as the
tokamak), we suggest in this work that a change in the equilibrium paradigm can
ameliorate this limitation. We demonstrate that there exists a deep physical
connection between quasisymmetry and magnetostatic equilibria with anisotropic
pressure, extending beyond the isotropic pressure equilibria commonly
considered.
