For the past four years, the burning question in American politics has been rather simple – do you resort to bigotry when dealing with a bigot? The Democratic-Left-progressive consensus firmly refused to resort to such uncivil means. At least the top-rank political class and thought leaders did anyway.
But recently, top Democrat Nancy Pelosi failed her own tribes’ test. During an interview to CNN, when critiquing US President Donald Trump’s obsession with advocating hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, even though it remains to be approved, Pelosi said Trump should be careful — he is, after all, a “morbidly obese” man.
Regardless of how vile and racist Trump’s statements generally are and have been in the recent past, fat-shaming someone doesn’t exactly fit in the liberal matrix. But Pelosi’s problematic statement wasn’t the end of it.
While most progressives immediately got on social media to condemn Pelosi’s apparent quip, there was a subsection that cheered and celebrated her statement. Soon, hashtags such as #PlumpTrump and #MorbidlyObese started trending on Twitter.
It was a reminder that bigots exist on both ends of the political spectrum.
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Trump’s a bigot, so what?
It is often hard to defend Trump, even when he has been wronged. Trump has made racist statements targeting almost every race in the US. He has attacked Chinese, Hispanics, Mexicans, Arabs, Jews, African Americans, and Native Americans. But it’s not just racism that Trump excels at. He has gone after disabled, transgenders, and referred to women as “horseface”, “lowlife”, “fat”, and “ugly”.
Even this time around, when asked to respond to Pelosi’s statement, he said, “Pelosi is a sick woman. She’s got a lot of problems.”
Trump’s racism and bigotry notwithstanding, fat-shaming him is deeply problematic because of two reasons.
First, it encourages more fat-shaming in society. A study conducted by psychologists at McGill University looked at 20 events of fat-shaming celebrity women and found that it led to “a spike in women’s implicit anti-fat attitudes, with events of greater notoriety producing greater spikes.”
Second, and more importantly, fat-shaming seems to link “fatness to moral failing — of being lazy or gluttonous or stupid”, according to Stacy Hartman of City University of New York.
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Problem of fat–shaming in US politics
Neither is Pelosi the first liberal to fat-shame Trump, nor is this the first instance of fat-shaming in US politics.
In 2019, Andrew yang, former Democratic presidential candidate and with strong liberal credentials, fat-shamed Trump during his campaign. “I don’t think Donald Trump could run a mile. Would you guys enjoy trying to watch Donald Trump run a mile? That would be hysterical. What does that guy weigh, like, 280 or something?” Yang had told a public gathering in Iowa.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was repeatedly fat-shamed. Back in 2012, journalist Barbara Walters asked him if he “couldn’t be president because you’re too heavy?” And then during the 2014 White House Correspondents Dinner, Christie was roasted about his weight by comic Joel McHale. “Governor, do you want bridge jokes or size jokes? Because I have got a bunch of both. I could go half and half. I know you like a combo platter,” McHale had quipped.
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Politics is a strange mirror to society
There are several similar instances of fat-shaming in US politics. But something from over a 100 years ago needs to be recounted to get a sense of how things have changed.
The 27th president of the US, William Howard Taft, who occupied the White House from 1909 to 1913, weighed 154 kg. The legend has it that he once got stuck in a bathtub and had to be pulled out by six people.
But back then, physical heft reflected “wealth, high social status and power”, according to Paul Campos of University of Colorado Boulder and author of Obesity Myth. It is almost impossible for a person of Taft’s size to become the president of the US today, he adds.
Several studies have shown that voters care about how politicians look. The physical appearance mattered over a century ago and it matters today. A study conducted by psychologists at the Harvard University shows that American’s “implicit biases” against race and gender went down between 2004 and 2016, but their bias towards weight has gone up.
The point being, there is often a tendency to treat politicians as a special category of humans, who are probably more bigoted than the average citizen. Some liberals applauding Pelosi’s statement would suggest otherwise.
Pelosi probably didn’t intend to call Trump “morbidly obese”, but it just slipped out. That’s the thing with bigotry, you can conceal it, but it comes out in unexpected ways and at unexpected moments. Deep down, Pelosi just holds the views of the average American voter.
Views are personal.