Our collective response to Donald Trump lying about his weight during his booking process at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia on Thursday presents us with an opportunity. A moment, for us as a society, to reflect on and, hopefully, address the stigma and biases that we hold about large bodies. It’s time.
Discrimination against large bodies is the last ACCEPTABLE form of prejudice in our society. Even as we have stood up for the rights of and created protections for . . . and embraced . . . almost every other marginalized group in our society, we somehow continue to be OK with how we think about and treat people who live in large bodies. Let’s face it: the reason that we find it so funny that Trump lied about his weight is because of how we feel about large bodies, in general. So, it becomes a source of humor and derision that he cannot “own” this “moral failing” . . . the moral failing being that he weighs more than what he—and the rest of us—believe is acceptable.
When we make fun of Trump for lying about his weight, we are (even if unintentionally) lending credibility to the idea that a person’s body weight is something that they should or could be ashamed of. In fact, there is nothing shameful about having a large body. Of course, this is not what the vast majority of us believe. For over a half-century, we have been fed the propaganda, if you will, that human bodies are supposed to be within a certain range of sizes. We are told this by the medical establishment, by insurance companies, by the media and the fashion industry, by employers, in our families, and on the playground. And we defend our bigotry about size by insisting that large bodies are unhealthy.
As someone who believes in the goodness of all bodies, I refuse to waste my time and energy on debates about the health of large bodies. If you are interested in the hard science that is out there, you can find some of it here. The bottom line is that this debate has nothing to do with the fact that large-bodied folks deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, to be treated fairly and equitably, and as valued members of society. Anything short of this is HATE. For many of us, this is a new idea. Large-body phobia (fatphobia) is so rampant in our society that we believe that poking fun at large-bodied people is harmless. Please take a moment to think about the harm that is actually caused. About the impact that this poor treatment has had, and continues to have, on the lives and well-being of people, like me, who live in large bodies. In the same way that Dave Chappelle’s “harmless” jokes about trans women add to the body of thought and belief that says that trans experiences are not legitimate and, therefore, trans women, as humans, do not matter, and it is OK to inflict pain and death on them, so, too, are large-bodied folks harmed by hateful rhetoric.
Please remember that, when we express our disdain for Trump by making fun of his size, we are causing harm to all large-bodied people. Is that what we really want to be doing?
